Children who are missing out on festive family fun while they stay at Great Ormond Street Hospital were given a free trip to see London’s Christmas lights by black cab drivers.
Eight children and their families were collected from the central London hospital by cabs decorated with tinsel and Christmas lights while inside the cars they found Christmas crackers, Santa hats and chocolate gifts.
Among them was three-year-old Alfie, from south-east London, who has been an inpatient since June and is likely to stay at the hospital until the end of January.
This can result in inflammatory bowel disease, recurrent fevers, low blood count and an enlarged spleen.
Alfie had a bone marrow transplant in July with the aim of curing his condition but complications have extended his time in hospital.
Alfie has been poorly since he was a baby but has never been in hospital during the Christmas period although he hopes to be able to go home for a few hours on Christmas Day.
Kathleen told the PA news agency that they were all particularly impressed by Fortnum and Mason’s advent calendar festive decor but the real highlight of the lights tour was “just doing a Christmas activity together because we haven’t really been able to do anything”.
“Alfie can’t really be around crowded places so we’ve had no Santa visit, no ice skating, normal things that we would do.
“This is our only Christmas thing that we’ve all done together. That’s really, really nice. It’s something that they will remember.”
“We were like royalty,” she said, adding that their driver Lee McQueen, who organised the festive lights tour, was “such a nice man” and “really good with the kids”.
“He decorated all the taxi and put Santa hats on all the seats, put all stickers on the windows. There was Christmas music, chocolates for the kids, sweets, drinks.
“He really decorated it lovely, it was so nice.”
“You get up and do the same thing so it is something to actually look forward to.”
Mr McQueen organised the tour through the hospital’s play team, which is funded by the Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity, after approaching the hospital around a year ago.
The team makes hospital stays more fun for children who are treated to festive activities like Santa visits, parties, presents and carol singing.
Mr McQueen said he remembers putting money in the hospital charity collection boxes as a child, continues to donate and also follows the black cab tradition of giving free lifts to children going to the London hospital for care: “Every time I’m at work in my cab and someone gets in with a child asking to go to Gosh I never charge.”
The 42-year-old father of two from Brentwood, Essex, has been a black cab driver for nine years and recently qualified to be a tour guide, offering history tours of the city, through the Worshipful Company of Hackney Carriage Drivers.
Other cabbies who had completed the tour guide course were happy to offer a festive trip to a family, he said, telling PA: “I asked them ‘would you be able to help me?’ and they didn’t even think about it, they just said yes straight away.”
“They were eating the sweets and chocolates, I had all the music on and the lights were set up, they had their Christmas jumpers on as well.
“They just had smiles on their faces.”
He added: “For me to be able to help them it’s amazing.”
He said they saw the lights in locations including Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Street during the November 29 trip which lasted nearly two hours.
The seven other volunteer drivers hope to work with him on future tours, he said.
“Everybody who went on that trip and done it with me, they were just so privileged to be asked, to be able to do it because it was an honour at the end of the day.
He added: “I’ve been thinking about this trip for so long and I want to do it every year and make it bigger and better every single year so I’m hoping with the help of the contacts I’ve got now, we’ll be able to make this an annual trip and we can take everybody out if we can.”
– Donations to Gosh Charity, which also helps to pave the way for more breakthrough treatments and cures for the rarest and most complex conditions, can be made at: gosh.org
