BINGO! ARDFERT HITS A WINNER
THE community halls may be closed for the foreseeable future, but that has not stopped residents from two streets in Ardfert from taking part in their favourite past time – a good old game of bingo!
The initiative, which has now been dubbed ‘ Terrace Bingo’ by residents, takes place every Saturday night, and it sees those living in Casement’s View and St Brendan’s Terrace coming together – safely of course – and enjoying some bingo to help pass the evening.
And what started out as just a simple community idea has now grown into something more, with the residents even using the games as a way to raise funds for worthwhile causes – the most recent of which saw them teaming up with Centra to help raise over €2,000 for Pieta House.
Breda Duggan is one of those involved in the weekly games, and she spoke to us here in The Kerryman about the weekly fun.
“It started out that we would just go out and clap for the frontline workers, and then, just one night, I was saying to my husband, maybe we should do something. There are 17 houses, and a lot of the residents are elderly, and so we came up with the idea for bingo, and we went off and we sussed out where to get the books and the details of how to run it. It’s kind of just taken off from there,” said Breda.
“People have thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the good few bingo players in the terrace. They’re obviously missing their bingo, so this is a way of them getting their weekly fix,” she joked.
And even when the lockdown is finished. Breda hopes to continue running these kind of bingo nights into the future as well.
“We definitely want to keep them going after all this is over. Maybe not weekly, but certainly in one form or another. We’ve really enjoyed it.”