“We’re not trained councillors, we’re not therapists, we’re just like-minded blokes providing a safe place for other blokes to come out and talk in an open space,” said Dobson.<\/p>\n
“With the economy nowadays, pubs are closing and they used to be the central place where blokes used to go and vent.<\/p>\n
“That’s not happening any more, but to see something like this is fantastic.”<\/p>\n
David Chambers, from Garstang, said he went along for “a chance to talk to other people and maybe gain something from it”.<\/p>\n
He said: “Personally I’ve been through an awful lot in the last 18 months, and sometimes it’s easier to talk to strangers about issues you’ve got than it is with people you know.<\/p>\n
“Perhaps they can relate a little more easily because they don’t know the background.”<\/p>\n
Gemma Kelsall, owner of Bluebells and Daisies florists, said it was “overwhelming” to see about 20 men turn up.<\/p>\n
“We genuinely didn’t think we’d have such a good turnout,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We thought we might have to drag people in off the street kicking and screaming, but they’ve come.”<\/p>\n
She said she hoped after the class, the men would start flower arranging at home for their families.<\/p>\n
It was “brilliant to see some of our regulars as so many new faces,” said Declan Stephen.<\/p>\n
“Something like this is missing in Garstang,” he added. “It’s brilliant to join with another business to share a positive message.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“We’re not trained councillors, we’re not therapists, we’re just like-minded blokes providing a safe place for other blokes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[64,63,137,514,515],"class_list":{"0":"post-434095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}