After announcing Susan Gill as a deserving winner of Steel River’s Community Spirit Award, I couldn’t help but feel like I could do more to help the amazing work she does. Susan set up Neighbourhood Welfare Middlesbrough, a cafe designed to provide support for the homeless in Middlesbrough.

It offers food, showers, clean clothes etc…basics that we all take for granted every day! 

This month I was going to buy a new van to help with all our deliveries going out to you lovely folks (THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!), but then I saw local councils desperately asking businesses to donate laptops to schools.

Learning has been hard enough for kids through Covid but there have been too many that have struggled because their families can’t afford the equipment needed to attend lessons.

This year has been one of mental and physical struggle for a lot of people, it has seen the economy in pieces and our normal lives put on hold.

But it has also been a year in which I have never seen more generosity, more love and more community spirit. I have been fortunate in my business, with the entire country turning to online shopping in order to fill their new home bar needs, my baby has been able to grow.

And so I wanted to use some of that growth to support some of the amazing local organisation who really stepped up this year.

In the run up to Christmas I think a lot of people can get caught up in their own lives, I know I am certainly guilty of it.

We have so much to plan and so much to organise, whether it’s giving your kids the perfect Christmas, or being so focused on getting all your lovely gin delivered on time that I end up Christmas shopping last minute in a total panic.

Christmas can be chaos, but it is such a magical time. Sadly, this isn’t true for everyone.