New hub for Care Lochaber

NEW LOCATION FOR CARE LOCHABER

Alison Kane Care Lochaber has enjoyed a brilliant start in its new offi ce in what was the old job centre at the West End of the High Street. It is great seeing people passing our window, some of them popping in to see what is going on.

We are now back to off ering a full service with all our volunteers ready to help anyone that cannot get on a bus or access a bus route, whether they be elderly, disabled, have mental health issues or learning disabilities.

Our volunteers take clients to any medical appointments they may have, like doctor, nurse, or dentist and also take them to any clinics at the medical centre like podiatrist. We also take a lot of our service users to the lunch club and other community gatherings.

We can also take people to do their shopping and back again, saving them trying to get on and off a bus, and off er assisted shopping for anyone not able to do it themselves.

Our volunteer would help to choose items at the supermarket and bag up goods as well as picking up the client, help get them into a wheelchair or mobility scooter and go around the shop or supermarket with them. They would then take them home and take their bags into the house.

There is £5 fee in and around Fort William, which is for the return journey. There are also volunteer drivers in Ballachulish and Onich to help people in

that area, with Spean Bridge and Roy Bridge also in our catchment area.

Our volunteers are mostly retired who give up their free time, enabling us to continue this great service. They are out every day in all weathers and we couldn’t provide this service without them.

Our service users really appreciate the volunteers and love chatting to them in the car. Many may have not had much contact with other people and this gives them a chance to get out of the house, go to their appointment and have some social contact.

Care Lochaber also runs monthly events which have included lunches at the Moorings Hotel, afternoon tea at various places around Fort William, a visit to the garden centre at Appin and the pantomime at Eden Court. The Covid pandemic stopped these but we are keen to get started again and are planning our fi rst one for next month. These events are funded so we do not charge for these. Even the car to pick you up and take you home would be free. The building is also home to Lochaber Hope, the New Connections Hub and hosts a pop-up Vintage Café run by the Montrose Centre every Wednesday and Friday. It also has space for various groups to use. Please pop in and visit us here and have a cuppa and a chat.

Our phone number to book a car with the car scheme is 01397 701222. Allison or Laura will take your call.

Our volunteers are amazing and do a great job, but we are always looking to recruit new ones. We don’t have any women volunteers at the moment so if there is anyone out there that can spare a few hours per week please get in touch. We pay your expenses.

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We can learn a lot from children’s behaviour. In the cafe queue, a toddler lad broke free from granny’s hand and stretched up in front of me to reach the hand sanitizer. There are children growing up, I thought, for whom this and wearing a mask indoors is normal. Tragically, children are growing up deprived of a parent due to Covid. The Olympics and the 26th UN climate change conference in Glasgow were deferred for a year due to the virus. It has dominated people’s lives throughout the world, perhaps to the exclusion of other important things. For example, I can’t be the only person who worries that essential massive use and disposal of PPE has surpassed concern about excess plastic polluting the environment. l know I am not the only person in Lochaber who is concerned with food poverty, highlighted by last month’s article on the local food bank. There is also a perceived increase in spiritual poverty. Scripture Union Scotland, an organisation with the vision ‘to see the children and young people of Scotland exploring the Bible and responding to the signifi cance of Jesus’, estimate ‘there is huge spiritual poverty in Scotland and disbelief in Jesus.’ Another little lad, in the swimming pool, brought this to mind. A holidaying family of keen swimmers were being helped by a caring father to dive. The boy, about six or seven, jumped into the warm water using God’s name as an exclamation mark. That saddened me. It is a mark of spiritual poverty if our children only use the names of God and Jesus as exclamation marks or swear words. As few attend church and Covid closures have limited attendance of chaplains and volunteers to schools, how can we help children and fulfi ll the Lord Jesus’ words? ‘Whoever welcomes in my name such a child as this welcomes me.’ (Matt18.5)

Pupils at Banavie Primary School celebrate St Andrew’s Day with a Saltire and Tartan at the start of their ceilidh.

Photograph: Iain Ferguson, The Write Image.

An unusual gate guardian by the roadside. But where? LAST monTH: Community wellbeing shed in Ballachulish.

eXPeCt fiRewoRKs

Iain Ferguson Although Guy Fawkes night will be over by the time Lochaber Phoenix Boxing Club stages its Home Show on November 6, the sell-out crowd in Caol Community Centre can still expect to see fi reworks .

With three cancelled shows due to Covid, the local talented boxers are raring to blast-off when they enter the ring, desperate to put their long training sessions to use and show what they have learned.

In a planned programme of 13 bouts, four of the club’s youngest boxers will be making their debut, as will senior John Hutton, the fact it will be in front of a home crowd adding to the tension. High school pupils Jamie Douglas, Toby Jackson, Noah Johnston, and Callum MacLean have been dedicated attenders at the club gym for more than two years and kept training through lockdown with online advice from the coaches.

Like all club members, they spent time building up their fi tness and co-ordination before moving on to sparring and gaining the technical skills required in a bout. In previous years, the youngsters would have had the opportunity to visit other clubs, often in the central belt or north east to gain experience by sparring with other boxers and further hone their skills. However, due to Covid restrictions, this has been largely impossible.

Lochaber Phoenix head coach Vince Lopez and and coach Aidan Donnelly have been working more intensely with the young men since the Home Show was given clearance by Amateur Boxing Scotland and have also been carefully matching their skills with boxers from all over the country who will face them in the ring.

This ‘matchmaking’ is a long and involved process, comparing potential opponents ito ensure they are comparable in age, weight, size, skills and experience so that no-one starts off with an immediate advantage. What can often happen is that a few days, or even just a few hours, before the show a boxer can pull out for any number of reasons and this is why the programme can undergo last minute changes to names, or even lead to a bout being cancelled.

Hopefully on the night everything will go to plan and all of the Lochaber Phoenix boxers, Kevin Aitchison, Siobhan Duncan, Lee Bruce, Farquhar McRae, Josh Dieguno and top of the bill, former Scotland Squad member, Cameron Whyte will get the chance to tackle opponents in the ring to the excitement of the crowd.