Special News - March 2020

As of now, Greystone's house (HCA) and the School House (HRA) are closed until further notice.

We do not have access to our workshop at Greystone's House and will be unable to hold our monthly general meetings.

The following message was received from HRA:

Dear John, I'm writing on behalf of the HRA Directors to inform you with great regret that The Old School is being closed to group events as from the evening of Friday 20th March until further notice, on account of the COVID-19 outbreak. I'm sure that you'll understand the need to avoid any gatherings of people, especially those over 70, at the current time. Obviously individual officers of both Men's Shed and the Parish Council will be able to access their respective parts of the Old School as necessary for admin. purposes etc.: but any group activities need to be cancelled at present. Thank you for your understanding - please let your colleagues in Men's Shed know about this. We'll look forward to getting going again once things start getting back to normal! With every good wish - Keep safe - Richard Reader HRA CIC Director and secretary.

And as the current advice is for anyone in a vulnerable group to stop all social contact, we will not be going ahead with our monthly lunchtime get together at the Mudeford Club.

We all have a responsibility to ourselves, our families and everyone else to do everything we can to stop the spread of C-19

We are planning to set up a "closed" facebook group for our CMS members to keep in contact. I know that a few members have expressed concern about using social media, so let me assure everyone that we cannot sign you up to Facebook from our end. You have to install Facebook on your smartphone and accept an invitation from CMS to join the group. I personally think that keeping touch with friends and families over what could be a very long period of social isolation far outweighs any perceived risks in using social media.

Another way of keeping in touch is with WhatsApp which allows you to set up family groups, send messages, pictures, videos and to make video calls. Provided the phone is connected to WiFi, there are no charges and using WhatsApp will not eat into your data package. Again you need to start by installing WhatsApp on your smartphone. For anyone who is concerned about using social media, note that WhatsApp is owned by Facebook.

I am planning to continue with emailing a CMS Newsletter, but that will depend on having interesting stuff to write about. Please send me any ideas you have for things to do, projects you are working on, strategies for staying sane, anything really to stop me going on and on about my latest plane restoration - you have been warned!

So, Stay safe and stay well and if anyone needs any help, please ask.

John Pegram

Christchurch Men's Shed