A Pie and a Brew at Peebles Community Garden

It was a great week for the OPAL Borders spin-off ‘Pie and a Brew’ group who visited the Greener Peebles Community Garden on Tuesday.

The sun shone and the pies, sausage rolls and cakes were plentiful. There was even hot tea made from the garden with fresh mint and camomile to wash them down.

The ‘Pie and a Brew’ sessions were the brainchild of our OPAL service coordinator Julie, and Jillian from the Local Area Coordination (LAC) team at SBC.

We were finding that a lot of the OPAL sessions were being well attended by women but not so much by men. They tested the water with a few sessions at our sheltered development at Riverside, as well as at our Extra Care Housing development at Dovecot Court.

They were a big hit and, with the involvement of LAC – and good word of mouth – the sessions regularly attract a good number of men from the wider community as well as from our developments for food, drink and a good blether.

On Tuesday, the conversation flowed through a range of topics, including sadly some recent bereavements; a real joy of the groups is that now, with the men having built trust between each other we’re seeing them both opening up about what’s going on in their lives, but also supporting each other through difficult times as well as sharing in the good.

It’s always amazing what comes up in these conversations, and this was no exception, with Douglas telling us how he had met his wife when he was young and knew she immediately was the one for him – even though he was very shy he managed to speak to her – and that luckily, she had felt the same way about him.

His wife was half Italian but never knew who her father was, only that he had been an Italian prisoner of war.

Douglas described that later he made it his mission to try and find this information out for her, and that he managed to do this a long time before computers – a bit like Long Lost Family on TV – including taking a trip to Italy.

There has even been a BBC programme made about his successful mission to Naples to find out about his wife’s family roots. Douglas has agreed to come along to Dovecot Court to do a special session for OPAL telling this amazing story.

If you know anyone who’d like to volunteer, or if you would like to volunteer yourself at OPAL, please give Ally Ramage a call on 07917 816 570 or email alistairr@eildon.org.uk