With the scent of roast chicken and rice wafting across the parking lot, the Meals on Wheels facility in Paget is possibly one of the most delicious smelling buildings around on a weekday morning.

It is also probably one of the busiest places. Inside, at around 11 a.m. a host of bustling volunteers pack coolers filled with food and a hot water bottle to try to keep the warmth in for as long as possible. The parking lot fills up with cars with their boots open. One by one, the cars are packed, the boots are slammed shut and each car carrying two volunteers zooms off.

The meals go mainly to members of Bermuda?s elderly population and those who are shut-in and in need of some culinary assistance. The charity requires a letter from the client?s doctor to ensure that they are really not capable of cooking for themselves.

Ironically, many of the volunteers are the same age as the people getting the meals. One of longest serving volunteers is Raynold Boorman, 85, who has been delivering meals for the charity for 17 years.

A Lifestyle reporter met up with Mr. Boorman on Monday morning, shortly before he went out on deliveries.

Mr. Boorman has a thick north of England accent, but is actually Bermudian through his father.

It was the boredom of retirement that drove Mr. Boorman to join the Meals on Wheels team.

?I was a salesman for Midsea Company which is no longer in business,? said Mr. Boorman. ?Then at the end of March, 1987 I retired from regular business. In Bermuda unless you have some occupation you can get bored quick. I bore it until November.?

His salvation came when he spotted an article in the newspaper about Meals on Wheels.

?I did know a little about Meals on Wheels through one of my lodge brothers,? he said. ?Many times we would talk about it. Sometimes I would ask him questions. The article in the newspaper was quite extensive. I wish I had kept it now. It was looking for volunteers, drivers, cooks and whatever. Right away, I said that is for me. I immediately went to the telephone and called up.?

Meals on Wheels welcomed him with open arms, and he was made a driver. At that time Meals on Wheels was still a relatively new charity in Bermuda. They only did three days a week instead of the four they do now, they had eight routes instead of 15 and they operated out of St. Paul?s Church instead of the swanky new facility in Paget. ?I was parked with a lady,? he said. ?It was enjoyable. I was more or less on standby filling in for different routes. I did about six of those routes. As I went on, I enjoyed it, I said put me down for the other days.?

Mr. Boorman?s three routes usually cover the eastern end of the Island. There are usually an average of 16 or 17 people on each route.

Even thought Mr. Boorman had been a salesman before, travelling all over the Island, his work with Meals on Wheels showed him a whole new side of Bermuda.

?As a salesman I thought I knew Bermuda, but when you do Meals on Wheels you realise you don?t know Bermuda at all,? he said. ?You go through a lot of estate roads and private roads. When you get there you say ?I never knew this existed?. I now know more about Bermuda than I ever did.?

Meals on Wheels cooks start working at 8.30 a.m. and they work in teams of four or five with the kitchen coordinator. Drivers and assistants report for duty at 11 a.m. for those covering St. George?s and Somerset and others begin at 11.15 a.m. .

One of the things that Mr. Boorman really enjoys about volunteering with the charity is the interaction with the clients.

?Most of the people are elderly people,? he said. ?Some of them are invalids even in bed. We will take it right into the bedroom if that is necessary. Of course, we make sure it is okay to go in. We don?t want to catch the person unaware. We will call out. We will put it on the table or right on the bed. There are always two volunteers going in.

?A lot of these people they are in their homes all day by themselves. No doubt they have daughters or whatever in the evening, but from 7 a.m. onward they don?t have anyone. We are the only ones they see. It is a little sunshine to them.?

Unfortunately with the nature of the Meals on Wheels business ? delivering meals ? the volunteers can?t linger too long in case the other dinners get cold.

?We say a few kind of words with them, and have a little joke,? said Mr. Boorman. He recalled one of his elderly clients who is now deceased.

?She was 97 or 98 years old when we started,? he said. ?She had all her faculties. She had a walker. Sometimes she would come to the door and unlatch it for us. I?d introduce the client to my driving partner as ?my dance partner?. I?d say ?we go dancing every night at the Princess?. That would make her laugh.

?Other days I would say, ?didn?t I see you jogging down East Broadway this morning?? She would say, ?Oh, it wasn?t me?. I?d say, ?sure it was you?. That got a smile on her face.?

Mr. Boorman said that like most things in life, you have to make what you can of the volunteer experience.

?I know some people just go there and put the dinner in and walk out,? he said. ?I am not that kind of person. If I miss that route, for some reason ? say I get switched to a different route ? the clients are concerned. When I see my regulars again they say ?I missed you last week, were you ill?? I would say, no, I had to be switched to another route.?

Many of the meals are specially made to suit clients? dietary needs and tastes.

?There are different types of meals,? said Mr. Boorman. ?There are the regular meals, but there are also meals for diabetics, and people on a low-salt diet. We might have a regular soup and a low-salt soup. We also have regular desserts and those for diabetics.

?Then you get people who can not heed certain foods or don?t like certain things. I have one person who doesn?t like rice, and another who doesn?t eat mashed potato. There are some who can?t heed broccoli. I did have one who gave me a card with all the green vegetables written on it that she couldn?t have such as kale and broccoli.?

Meals on Wheels currently delivers around 190 a day. When Mr. Boorman was driving to St. George?s and St. David?s he would cover as much as 53 kilometres a day.

?We use to drive right down to the water front on Floral Lane, but we don?t have anybody down there anymore,? he said.

Unfortunately, Mr. Boorman recently started experiencing some health problems.

?I have never been sick a day in my life,? he said. ?There was a time when I would go eight or nine years I wouldn?t get a cold.?

Meals on Wheels volunteers are usually required to stop driving at 80 years of age, and retire altogether at age 85.

Since Mr. Boorman has been such a loyal volunteer he is allowed to go along to navigate, but he is not allowed to deliver meals to the clients.

?I turned 85 on December 4,? said Mr. Boorman. ?One minute you are looking forward to your birthday, but at the same time I knew the time was coming. I enjoy working with Meals on Wheels. The organisation is well operated.?

In many ways, the people at Meals on Wheels are a family to Mr. Boorman since he has never been married, and has no children. He said if it came to it, he would become a client of Meals on Wheels but at the moment he does his own cooking and laundry.

?Meals on Wheels is a great organisation,? he said. ?If any person has got a couple of hours a day they should consider volunteering. It is a way to meet people.?

Staff at Meals on Wheels said they would like to expand their meal service to five days a week, but to do so they would need 40 more volunteers to pack dinners, make deliveries and cook the meals.

This Christmas, Meals on Wheels is also hoping Santa will bring them a number of kitchen items including a new set of kitchen knives in a knife block, small Pyrex casserole dishes with lids, a hand-held blender, Pyrex measuring jugs, among other things.

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