Bridge is mind sport, a challenge of mental rather than physical capacity and stamina. Consequently we have many members who have mobility challenges - whether due to accident, disease or just the passage of years.
It is one of our club's strengths that we welcome and try to assist these valuable members. We are fortunate that Meals on Wheels have agreed to give us use of eight of their weekday parking spots from noon onwards. Even with this we do not have a lot of accessible parking near the club-house. What we have, we need to look after carefully.
We ask you to give our mobility challenged friends the best help possible by:
- Assisting them by opening doors for them, moving chairs out of their way, and being happy to move to another table to allow them to sit at an accessible one,
- Only parking in a Meals-on-Wheels spot if it has been allocated to you by our volunteer coordinator Mike Gibbs - if you feel you deserve to be allocated one, talk to Mike and if still unsatisfied refer your request to the Committee,
- Ensuring you advise Mike if you will not be using an allocated spot so that he can advise the opportunity to others with needs who would otherwise miss out,
- Not pestering Meals-on-Wheels staff by asking permission to use one of these spots - they have asked all Bridge Club members to talk with Mike/our committee and not involve them,
- Not parking in a wide disabled parking spot right outside the Nelson Heather Centre at any time if you do not have a Disabled Parking Permit, and
- Not parking in a wide disabled parking spot right outside the Nelson Heather Centre if you have been allocated one of the spots outside Meals-on-Wheels - doing so uses two of these scarce spots and means another mobility challenged member misses out.
Sound draconian? It is not meant to be, but it is meant to help as many of our mobility challenged members as possible.
We hope you will all show that you care and appreciate these club members.
David Farmer and Mike Gibb
