View from the balcony

Not sure what possessed us but the morning after our team Christmas do, we arranged to spend some time kitting out 2 balconies at the Ronald McDonald house in Birmingham.

It is a fantastic resource for families with seriously ill children at Birmingham Children's Hospital, a place for them to stay next door to the hospital with lots of great facilities. We get support for community activities from our employer and got some funds to buy wooden patio furniture, plants and pots to make the balconies another place where the families can go. Probably in the summer though, as it was absolutely freezing out there!

We had to get all the stuff upstairs to the 2 balconies, then put the furniture together, plant up the pots and decide where everything was going. We'd put the office phones through to a mobile and someone had to be on hand to take messages - there will be some catching up to do on Monday but hopefully not too much! It was interesting to see how different people organise themselves for activities like this which are well outside our normal daily work lives.

I was helping sort out the planting, I'm not a DIY fan so wasn't going to be much use putting garden furniture together.

This is the view from the 5th floor balcony - it is right in the city centre so there aren't stunning views of lovely scenery but it will be a place where the families can get outside for a bit of air instead of being cooped up indoors all the time.