Cover story: James & Star Wars

get2gether’s newsletter – Your #1 community magazine it’s on its way! This means you can also find a little bit more about this month’s cover model, James. Here is his blog.

How long have you been get2gether member?

I have been a member for a very long time, I used to come along to Karaoke Discos at Gorgie in Edinburgh. Once, I went up to DJ Andy and sang an ABBA song “Super Duper”.

How did you find the change from community to online events?

I really enjoyed getting connected online. I only started using zoom last year, once I received the Ipad from Garvald. They organized for me to get connected. In the beginning, I used to come along to one or two zoom events. But, now I am zooming all the time. One of my favorite events was thoughts and feelings with Stephan and I love the events that Ambassadors run. In the past, I have been to Katrina’s seated exercise, and Andrews events are always brilliant! A night at the theatre with Sarah was also great, I really enjoyed it.

I have met some new people and made new friends since I started going on zoom. It’s a great pleasure to see new people online. I like helping other people at get2gether and that includes all my friends there who I know already, but I would like to help them more as I can, as I like to be friends with everyone.

You are now planning to host your own event – do you want to tell us about the Star wars event?

I know a lot about Star Wars from story books. I also collect pictures, figures and movies. The thing I like most about it is the story by George Lucas and the music by John Williams.

get2gether has given me a chance – when I got asked what could I do if was to do an event. Now, we are planning the event with Katrina, the Ambassador, and another member Mairi. We hope that this event is for every Star Wars fan out there – I have researched some fun facts, which will be the main part of the event. I will be testing the knowledge of other star wars fans.

This will be my first ever event on zoom I will host. I want to keep on being on zoom with get2gether and see all my friends. I miss my friends a lot, especially Stephan. In the past I have hosted a radio show before for Garvald radio, I was broadcasting music “The phantom of the opera music” adn the songs from the “Oasis” last year in May 2020. This was one off. But I have never hosted an event like this before.

I am learning a lot from this process and I can’t wait till 3rd May for our Star Wars event. I would be delighted for people to know that I am doing a good job and I am helping get2gether and other members to connect.

James receives great support from Real Life Options. get2gether recognises that the Real Life Options is providing an outstanding support to our members during the COVID-19 pandemic, and with their support members are encouraged and supported to access online events.

They have also told us: “We would like to say thanks to get2gether as having get2gether online has been a great help during the pandemic for us. Since the day centre has been closed, it has been far less isolating for James to be able to connect with other members of get2gether online. Not only that, James is also doing new things that he has never done before, just by using technology! He had a laptop before, but that was really used, he never really had access or reason to go online, so having get2gether zoom events has made a big difference. There is only so many things you can do in the house, and it is really helpful for us to know that James is keeping in touch with his friends.”