January 2025 newsletter part one

1. Welcome to January’s newsletter. I hope everyone was able to enjoy the festive season and now feel invigorated to face the New Year. The look of excitement seeing your new Workmate, set of chisels or a nice shiny saw sitting under the Christmas tree, must have been a joy to behold! Did you consider making a New Years resolution? In a survey, 22% of people said they failed to keep all of their resolutions just 6 days into the New Year. So you won’t be alone in failing to keep your resolution to quit smoking, lose weight or to give your wife or partner a hug every day. Historically, the first recorded people to set New Year pledges (later to become known as resolutions) are the Ancient Babylonians some 4,000 years ago. One resolution that would be easy to keep is visit the Shed more often and enjoy what WMS has to offer in friendship, practical skills and general wellbeing. So, as the old fella with the scythe and hourglass disappears in to history, what does the New Year bring for WMS? We will again have a busy few months ‘reassembling’ our Shed and getting the ‘lean to’ constructed and located. I hope we can rely on the enthusiasm of members again to come in and assist in the work still to do. One of the last monthly BBQ meetings gave us a chance to relax and enjoy each other’s company after the work parties. We also now have our own ‘cable man and scrappy’ in Tony Smith. The scrap value of the defunct cable and metal contributes much-needed funds towards our regeneration expenses.

2. During November work continued and we made good use of the unseasonal weather and commenced work on the front canopy. We certainly worked like a well-oiled machine with a couple of us on the platform locating and screwing and a team of measurers and saw masters below cutting the boards to the size. It was completed by the end of the week. Another task ticked off. A real teamwork effort managed to complete the installing of the interior ceiling boards before the WMS closed period, so we were able to plaster up and we are now ready for painting in the new-year. It has been quite remarkable what has been achieved during the last few months, both at the ‘coal face’ and behind the scenes with grant applications, dealings with HBC and contractors. We even have an avenue for our scrap metal now and are also signed up with the HBC weekly lottery, which helps us financially. We could gain still more financially if we had more member lottery tickets each week. Just a plug!

3. The last social event of 2024 was the annual Christmas lunch. Once again we enjoyed an excellent meal and service by the staff of Cowplain Activity Centre. We also were pleased to have Jacqui Benham our ASDA Community Champion back to draw the raffle and meet members. Jacqui has been stalwart in supporting us over the years and we are very grateful to her and her efforts on our behalf A big thank you goes out to Paul Turner for his tireless work organising to ensure we all had a great afternoon. Thanks also for the wonderful raffle prizes donated by members. We have photos of the tables in the Social section of the website.