Tidy Towns helping to keep the humour good in Rochfortbridge
(Above) Michael Lawless and Donagh McTiernan in McTiernan’s CarePlus Pharmacy.
This year’s competition was officially cancelled last week but Cathy Whelehan and Maria Bagnall of the Rochfortbridge Tidy Town committee were busy women when the Westmeath Examiner passed through on Friday.
The ladies were painting plant boxes and cleaning up picnic benches in the glorious spring sunshine, while strictly adhering to the social distancing guidelines – and not to garner a few extra points from judges, but for the greater good at this difficult time.
“It’s to make the place more pleasant for the people that live in it and that pass through it. At least now people can sit out here on the benches,” Maria said, while Cathy added that hopefully it will “keep the humour good about the village”.
The ladies say that they are coping well during the Covid-19 crisis. Working with the Tidy Towns helps and they have also been busy in their own gardens.
“I find it’s not too bad because I live on the street,” Maria said. “There are people always passing up and down and if you are out doing something, you will chat to someone across the way so it’s not really that isolating.”
Likewise, Cathy says that living in a close-knit community helps.
“I live in the small estate Brookfield, and I have to say that we do get out and sit outside our own houses on the wall or on the little fences and kind of shout across to each other. It’s a good job we are not talking about anyone (laughs). You’d bring out your own cup of tea. In the estates it’s grand. In Derrygreenagh, they have music. You can look at it on Facebook. It takes the actual sting out of what we are not allowed to do.”
The same as grannies all over the world, Maria and Cathy are keeping in touch with their grandkids through social media, which Cathy says, has been a “lifesaver” for people.
In the local post office, staff member Declan Ryan says people are coping well and doing their bit to slow the spread of the virus.
“We are trying not to think about it. You just go and do your best and keep going. We have our gloves and plastic on the windows. It’s a different way of doing things. We are making sure to wash our hands and keeping them clean and not touching your mouth. You try to tell people to do the same thing. At the post office people have been compliant. People coming into the post office are standing back and keeping their distance.”
While the number of people coming in has fallen since fortnightly social welfare payments were introduced, Declan says that “post is way up”. The post cards circulated by An Post at the start of the crisis have proven popular.
“Post wise we are very busy for the last two or three weeks. It was a great idea [the postcards] – the grannies are very appreciative of it. A lot of people are coming in and asking if we have any more of those cards. We had a box of them and we were giving them out. Even adults were looking for them too.”
In McTiernan’s CarePlus Pharmacy, pharmacist Michael Lawless says that after a hectic few weeks business has “kind of gone back to normal in terms of how busy we are”.
“Just after the schools were closed, it got very busy. For the next couple of weeks we were swamped. There were supply issues with inhalers and things like that.
“There were a couple of weeks where it was quite stressful. There was a bigger workload. It was more difficult to get the stock that we needed. I think then people came back and we said that we had run out of something
“There was never an issue with supplies, it was just getting it to the pharmacies that became an issue.
“This month it has gone back more towards the normal flow. We have changed around the way we are operating the business a little bit. We trying to have as few a people in the pharmacy as possible so people are tending to ring in their prescriptions, and we are taking their numbers and giving them a call to let them know when they can come in and collect it. That seems to be working okay. We’ve adapted as well as we can.”