Last month Donabate Portrane Men’s Shed applied to Fingal County Council for a second plot at Turvey Allotments, as our first allotment has proven to be so successful with our members providing productive outdoor activity, which is relatively safe in these Covid-restricted times. At present, winter maintenance work is being done by one member at a time, in compliance with Level-5 restrictions, but in less restrictive times members benefitted from working together while proving the often-quoted Men’s Shed motto: “Men don’t talk face to face; they talk shoulder to shoulder.”Also last month, the Men’s Shed took delivery of the components for our upgrading of the Scouts’ Den funded by a grant from Fingal County Council and the Department of Rural and Community Development. Unfortunately, installation work must await easing of public health restrictions.Apart from tending our allotment one at a time, at present members are limited to weekly online get-togethers by Zoom, but as Professor Luke O’Neill, the eminent Trinity College virologist, assures us at a recent webinar arranged by the Irish Men’s Shed Association, “the cavalry is coming” in the form of a vaccine. Hopefully soon we can all get back to normality and our members can once again enjoy our weekly in-person gatherings, with tea, chat, darts, table tennis and exercise classes, and our other special events and occasionally our trips, like our visit in February 2019, photographed here, to the National Museum in Collins Barracks.
Anyone interested in joining us should phone Jim on 086-3694316.