Martin Corrick, 68, of Gordon Road, Gosport, wants to form a committee to set up a large shed for retired men
I’M JUST a person of a certain age living in Gosport and my issue is, what happens to older men when they retire?
If you look at the data, you find that if you live here, you’re more likely than anyone else in Hampshire to die early.
Now that is an unhappy statistic. In a way it is one of the most dangerous places for an older chap to live.
Now, why is that?
One of the reasons I suspect is that there isn’t enough for people of my age group, men at least, to do.
This is a problem that has occurred all over the world, particularly in Australia, where they came up the idea of a men’s shed.
It’s like a big workshop and it gives men of my age a place to go, work to do, machines and tools.
It gives them a social network as part of the workshop is a social area, a tearoom if you like, or whatever it is you decide to do.
The shed may have a focus, perhaps on furniture or metalwork or doing boats.
Can we get enough people together to get a men’s shed in Gosport?
It would have a very good effect on quite a large number of men.
It would get them away from sitting at home with the telly, getting depressed and ill, which is one of the reasons for this early death.
Can we get them out of the house and give them a great big place – and when I say them I’m one of them – get them out of the house, a nice place to be?
It’s got to be organised and have a management committee, a structure.
What we miss when we retire is the structure of life, we spend our lives whingeing about going to work, when we don’t work we whinge about that too.
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