Interviewer:  What do you like most about volunteering?

Damian:  Interacting with people and interacting with such a wide range of people from different backgrounds, different nationalities and different cultures – for me, that’s the most interesting part.  You’re dealing with people that you maybe would never normally come in contact with, and I find that quite good and you always hear things or they say things to you and I think that’s good.  You probably like the technical side more…

Bridget:  I like how it works, how it all gets together… I also like the event management, but having said that, I do like the different characters that you come into contact with.  I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the 148^th Open golf tournament, but the Balmoral Show was my baby – that’s my favourite thing of the year.  We’re just so disappointed that it hasn’t happened yet this year, didn’t happen last year… coming from a farming background, that was always my thing.  I have thoroughly enjoyed my time there.  I decided that I was going to see how many steps I did over the four days of the Balmoral Show and I had done 120,000 steps… *laughs* I was doing over 30,000 steps a day, going around everywhere – that’s just one week personal goal that I’ve never met before.  So it’s just things like that… I enjoy the people who I come into contact with and through the likes of the show and stuff as well.

Interviewer:  It’s so interesting because you both say different things… Does that help when becoming volunteers, the fact that you volunteer together?

Bridget:  I think it’s probably brought each other on in some ways.

Damian:  I’m not sure I would have gotten involved with a volunteering organisation if Bridget hadn’t been involved.  I do football refereeing as well – that was what I used to do before volunteering and I’m not sure I would have ever thought about volunteering outside of the football referee unless Bridget had done it.

Bridget:  And in the same way, I enjoyed the volunteering that I have done, but I’ve tried different things within volunteering, and I probably wouldn’t have tried them only that Damian was interested, and that gave me a wee bit more confidence to actually give it a go – knowing that he was there as well… You’ve seen the enjoyment that he got out of the things and you’ve maybe done stuff that you would never have thought of doing…

Damian:  We did things that I would never have done because I had really no interest in those things… but because of Bridget was doing it, I went along and it sort of broadened me a little bit and gave me a bit more insight into things that maybe I wasn’t particularly interested in or wouldn’t naturally be interested in so it works well.  It probably just gives you a chance to spend time together – you’re both getting something out of it.

Bridget:  It’s one thing for us to say that with one son who lives away and works away, it can be hard to get sort of family time at times, because we’re both working at separate ends of the country, both working full time… You quite often come home in the evening and you’re chattered… But it’s nice to have something that we can then do together as a leisure pursuit, that we can do together as well.  We’ve had quite a few things with golf, and we volunteer separately at other golf events – we make it into a holiday: we have a few days away, and it’s all part of it.  And we’ve got a whole new network of friends now as well, people that we didn’t know before – so that’s been a big bonus, as well.

Damian:  I think the other thing is that away from volunteering, we don’t have any common interests, something we can do together that we have a common interest…

Bridget:  Yeah, he runs, I walk, you know… *laughs* Volunteer Now has given us the common interest of volunteering, where we would have done our separate things beforehand – so it’s been good from that point of view.

Interviewer:  Anything else that you would like to say?

Bridget:  Just looking forward to the next event… I’m gonna say, working at the vaccination centres has been very different, and it’s been very interesting.  Once again, from my point of view, seeing how it’s all being put together; from Damian’s point of view, probably meeting other people that he wouldn’t ordinarily have met. I have to say, I’ve enjoyed interacting with people and meeting with people… it’s maybe more difficult in some ways, because you’ve got so many people coming through the vaccination centre, so you can’t have the same interaction with people that you maybe would have at other things, but I find it very interesting.  And I think we were saying this the other day, “what are we going to do when it stops?”, “what’s gonna happen next?” – because it has been something for us and we went into our comfort zone to Craigavon, close to home where we knew what we were doing.  Then we went off to Ballymena.  We were there a couple of weeks ago just to try something different… I would never have done it on my own – I wouldn’t have gone but because Damian was interested I thought I would give it a go and did it.