June / July 2001 Newsletter

Welcome back to the June/July issue of 'Newsbridge'. Following much discussion we have decided to produce our Newsletter bi-monthly from now on.

We have a very exciting and informative issue for you this month which we hope you will enjoy. If there are any queries, comments or if you are interested in submitting an article please ring, write or e-mail us, details on the contact page.

Poems:

Enjoy A Shoulder to Cry on.

As a funeral passes by for another
to be laid to rest and the
tears sprinkle down from the sky
and no more cries for
the body in the coffin as it is laid to rest
for ever and a day.

They dress in black
but there is no
bringing this body back
as he or she is laid to rest.

Soon after there is
no shoulder to cry on
for they still have to carry on with life

Martin

THE DEVIL WAS IN SLEEPY MURPHY AND JESUS WAS IN ME
WE WERE IN SAINT ITA'S PORTRANE
THE ONE BESIDE THE SEA
THE WARD WAS FULL OF PEOPLE SCREAMING TO BE FREE
IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT THEY WERE SLEEPING
ALL EXCEPT ME

ALL DOSED UP ON MEDICINE THEY SNORED IN HARMONY
IT SOUNDED LIKE ONE VOICE CRYING OUT I'LL NEVER BE LONELY
IT ECHOED IN MY EARS LIKE A HUNTING MELODY
THEN I HEARD A VOICE JOIN IN I'LL NEVER BE LONELY
I'LL NEVER BE LONELY

HOW CAN THIS BE I THOUGHT TO MYSELF HE CAN HEAR IT TOO
IT WAS SLEEPY MURPHY READING MY THOUGHTS
I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO I WAS SCARED CONFUSED BUT NOT SURPRISED
AT WHAT WAS TAKING PLACE
THE FIGHT WAS ON BETWEEN US TO SAVE THE HUMAN RACE

I WENT UP TO SLEEPY TO SEE IF IT WAS TRUE
AND HE JUMPED UP WHEN HE SEEN ME
HIS EYES WERE BLACK AS COAL
AND HE SHOUTED OUT A CRY SO DEEP
THE DEVIL WANTS MY SOUL

THAT MAY BE RIGHT OLD SLEEPY THE CHOICE IS YOURS TO MAKE
I'VE GOT JESUS IN ME THE GUY THAT WALKED THE LAKE
CAN YOU HEAR HIM CALLING DON'T MIND THAT OTHER VOICE
IT'S LYING AND DECEIVING AND COLD AS COLD AS ICE

THEN SLEEPY'S EYES TURNED BACK TO BROWN
THE ONES I KNEW BEFORE
I HEAR HIM NOW HE'S KNOCKING ON MY DOOR
I SEE THE LIGHT I SEE THE LIGHT
AS CLEAR AS YOU SEE ME

THEN WE HEARD A SOUND AND TURNED AROUND
IT WAS THE NIGHT NURSE WITH HIS KEY

Declan

The awakening

I feel within this heart of mine,
a grief so strong and yet divine.
For now through conventions common sense,
I am losing life's treasured innocence.

Now worldly knowledge stripped coldly bare,
has threatened my sheltered soul to tear,
my brain to shreds and leave,
but nothing there.

This grief that is of anguish full,
reflects life's tortuous living lull,
the ways of life now seem so clear,
for within my new born eyes are here,
reflections of my souls tormented cries.

It tries to rescue me but fails,
and thus my mind subjected,
souls through life's confusing madness,
but discovers also my sanity saved,
it is maturity that has slaved to bring my soul to its treasure

Aileen

Smile for you

Smiling is infectious, you catch it like a flu,
when someone smiled at me today, I started smiling too,
I passed around the corner and someone saw my grin,
when he smiled I realised I'd passed it on to him.
I thought about that smile and then I realised its worth,
a single smile, just like mine could travel round the earth.
So, if you feel a smile begin, don't leave it undetected,
lets start an epidemic quick and get the world infected.

Recipe:

Spaghetti Bolognese

You will need:
12 oz Spaghetti
1 oz Parmesan cheese
For the sauce:
1 Onion
1 Carrot
1 stick of Celery
1 clove of Garlic (optional)
½ beef Stock cube
1 tablespoon Oil
2 oz diced Bacon
8 oz freshly minced Beef
1/ 8 oz can of peeled Tomatoes
1/ 2¼ oz can Tomato puree
1 Bay leaf Salt
Pepper and Sugar to taste.
8 oz can of peeled Tomatoes

Preparation time of 10 minutes, Cooking time of 40 minutes.

Finely chop the onion, carrot and celery. Crush the garlic if used. Dissolve the stock cube in ¼ pint of boiling water. Fry the vegetables, bacon and garlic gently until golden brown. Add mince, stir and cook until lightly browned. Add tomatoes and juice from the can, puree, bay leaf stock, salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar. Cook gently for 30 - 40 minutes stirring occasionally. Taste and correct seasoning if required. Meanwhile cook the spaghetti, drain and put on a hot serving dish. Pour the sauce into the centre. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese over the top. Note: this dish looks more attractive if served in individual portions. To save time or broken lengths of spaghetti, try using fancy pasta shapes such as bows or shells.

WORD SEARCH:

Please note that words occur in all directions, including diagonal, we hope you enjoy the 'search', let us know how you get on!!!!!!

Holiday Report:

On Saturday 19th May, I left Dublin Airport on a flight to London. From there, I got a flight to the island of Jersey. This is one of the Channel Islands and is probably most renowned for its financial services.

The island is small, with a length of 9 miles at most and width of 6 miles at its widest point. This small size allows the visitor to get around most of the island. The bus service radiates from the capital, St. Helier in all different directions around the island. A lot of the facilities are geared towards the tourist, as tourism is a large part of the economy, along with farming and finance. The island is divided into parishes that would serve much the same purpose as our county divisions. Each parish is named after a saint, such as St. Mary or St. Brelade the exception is Trinity. There are approx 81,000 people living on Jersey, which at 45 square miles makes for a very dense population. Because of the tourism industry and the use of hire cars in that industry, there are approx 86,000 vehicles registered on the island, now how is that for congestion?

Many different interests and tastes are catered for on such a small island, you could feel as if you were at home. The language most commonly spoken is English, the money is sterling, the VAT rate is zero, but given all that the island can prove an expensive place to spend a week or two. However, the weather is warm and sunny - most of the time.

I returned via London on the following Saturday 26th May.

Tom

Admin News

Welcome to the Admin Unit once again. We have been very busy over the past while with updating our various leaflets and brochures. Also over the past week we have had a group visit from the ASK Network who are assisting us in the preparation of a website. This is progressing nicely and we are currently deciding who should we link into from our site. More and more members are experimenting with using the computers and trying to improve their skills in this area. Got to go, so enjoy the newsletter. Don't forget to forward any articles which you may wish to be included in future issues.

Regards from Tom and the gang in Admin

EMPLOYMENT UNIT

Congratulations to Declan, Barry, John and Pierce on their success in securing a job position.

There has been a good buzz this month in the Employment Unit. More members have come forward and expressed an interest in employment. Over the coming weeks, they will be job profiled and hopefully job matched.

We would like to express our thanks to "McDonald's", "J.H.T. Furniture" and "Unitec" security for supporting our work programme. All members were welcome and many attended our employment social, Friday, June 29th at the Curragh Race Course.

Happy Working!

---

SOCIAL REPORT

Members and staff had a very enjoyable evening at the Race Meeting held in the Curragh Race Course on Friday 29th June.

It was the opening meeting to start the events for the Derby Weekend. Members placed bets on most of the races but some were lucky and some not so lucky - enough said on that topic. If you wish to know more on the betting side of the evening then you should contact Martin as he is the guy with all the knowledge on racing and he is also the person with the fattest wallet leaving.

Members and staff rounded off the evening by having a drink in the Curragh Race Course lounge. There we met some of the local punters and listened to music.

Members would like to thank everyone involved in making this evening a success and thank the staff for coming.

Ray

---

Football Report:Kildare Dethroned

Kildare the Leinster Champions were unceremoniously dumped out of the Leinster Championship by the old enemy Meath on Sunday 24th June. Make no bones about it, the winning margin of 5 points did not flatter Meath in the slightest. The opening score of the match came from a 45, expertly converted by Kildare's man of the match Niall Buckley.

Meath were unruffled by this and soon registered 4 unanswered points. First to every ball, Meath ran amok with the forward Graham Geraghty having a field day. The forwards win matches and in this department, Kildare have struggled for years. Kildare's half forward line failed to register a single score between the three of them, Lynch, Doyle or Earley. The full forward trio of O'Dwyer, Brennan, and Eddie McCormack fared just a little better.

Meath play a very simple type of football, to launch high balls up the field to the likes of Ollie Murphy and Graham Geraghty.

Pierce

---

Catering News:

Since the last report from the Catering Unit, things have really improved in this area.

Two new members have joined the crew. All the members and staff welcome Michael and Seamus to the Catering Unit. Michael is a junior chef and boy does he know his stuff. Chef terms are the full flow of english in the Kitchen now. Michael and Seamus work as a good team and their motto is "when a job is to be done, it should be done now." These two share many a joke and spin the odd yarn in the process of the work ordered day. Bob was down from Westpoint a few weeks ago and measured up the kitchen for worktops and shelving. We now look forward to having these fitted over the next few weeks.

The Catering Crew

Work Experiences In Ireland

We are two students from Austria, and we study at the school of social work in Vienna.

In our school we have some practical training and we decided to do one of these in Dublin / Ireland. It was very hard to find a placement in Dublin. We phoned a lot of institutions, but nobody needed two students - until we phoned EVE. They were very friendly and Aidan Barnes told us that we are really welcome in Dublin.

So we checked our flight to Dublin and arrived on Saturday the 2nd of June, and we stayed here for one month. We wanted to see as much locations of EVE as we could, and so Ray and Aidan gave us some addresses, and one of these was the PLATINUM CLUBHOUSE.

It's our first day here, and the team and the members in CLUBHOUSE are really very nice, and we are pleased to stay here for three days. Martin, a member of this location, gave us a short tour through the building, which is new, big and clean.

We also visit other two locations in Kildare, one of these is a resource centre called TUS NUA and the DAY HOSPITAL. Our report is very short because it's our first day in the CLUBHOUSE but we are sure that it is a very successful and professional organisation and helpful for many people who need very good friends and support from the team.

We are really very happy that we can make some of our work experiences here and that we can see a lot of professional placements in Ireland.

Thanks for your help and support, we really enjoyed this day.

Bye for now Katrin and Astrid

Jokes / Gags

A Sligo man went to Dublin, to go to a match at Croke Park. He was never on a bus before, so he thought whatever the person in front says, I will say.
This girl got on and she said, "Sally Noggin single" So the Sligo man said, "Paddy Kelly married with four kids"

A tourist goes into a pub in Kerry and two lads were sitting at the counter with a big dog beside them. The tourist said to the Kerry man, "does your dog bite?" "NO" said the Kerry man. So the tourist put his hand down and the dog bit his hand The tourist said "F*** you! I Thought your dog doesn't bite" The Kerry man said, "That's not my dog, mine is at home in the kennel"

Eastern Regional Health Authority (ERHA) Visit to Platinum Clubhouse.

On the 27th June 2001, Platinum Clubhouse received a visit from board members of the ERHA, which consisted of Councillors and Health Board Officials. Twelve in all made the trip and we also had visitors from EVE Ltd, General Manager, Mr Frank Cameron, Area Manager (Training), Ms Maura Muldowney and Programme Development, Mr Tom O'Brien.

The day consisted of presentations by Catherine, Richie and Declan on Platinum Clubhouse, what we are and what we do and a presentation by Frank on the different services provided by Eve Ltd. In the South Western Area Health Board. Following this, there was a question and answer session and tours of the club provided by Ray, Patsy, Pierce and Seamus. Lunch was provided by the Kitchen Unit in the Club, namely Michael, Patsy, Mary and Breda. It was a very impressive buffet and was commented on by all attending the day.

The day was a resounding success and a big 'Thank You' goes out to all involved.

---

Disclaimer:
The views, opinions and beliefs expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily the views of Platinum Clubhouse. Any articles, items or pictures in this newsletter may only be reproduced following permission from Platinum Clubhouse.