A couple of weeks back, I was looking for women. As it turns out, and scooping some equality points on the way, it’s men I’m appealing for this week. Previously, it was female netball players I was seeking for some Silver Coast slam-dunking on behalf of the Sirens, who love to hoop (sic) and holler every week, meeting and making new friends with sport as the point of contact – sometimes literally, as I found out.
Today, although we are eschewing athletic activity, and as my ankles are still complaining weeks later, the fellas I am hoping to find will likely be sedentary and trying out a new hobby in a shed. Not literally a shed, but a shed-like atmosphere, where the same aims of sociability will be in the air, alongside teaching and learning new skills.
When fellow São Martian Josh Waldman first approached me with the idea, my mind went to similar ideas that I’d heard of around the world that were focused on improving male mental health, in a time where simple joy looks like a rarer and rarer state. And whilst I would have applauded kick-starting such an initiative with this aim in my neighbourhood, American Josh’s main focus appears to be on making new friends in the new country.
“It’s harder as an adult, I think, for everybody to make friends and maintain them,” explained this utterly well-meaning fellow on a recent Good Morning Portugal! breakfast show interview. “Back in college days, we had sort of a social construct that made it easy to connect with other people. It’s harder for us to make friends when we’re adults, outside of work.”
As our conversation unfolded, we recognised how our wives seemed far more able to connect with other women, causing Josh to note: “My wife can talk on the phone for hours with her friends. Yet, my longest conversation is about five minutes. So, you know, we’re just a little bit different.”
With this in mind, and as noted by the originators of the Men’s Shed concept in its formation back in 1980s Australia, it’s been noted that guys like to have something to focus on whilst meeting and bonding. They generally prefer this to the horrifying proposition of talking face-to-face about how we feel, which our wives and partners can be known to terrorise us with.
The US Men’s Shed Association (yes, I am as surprised as you might be) shares their primary aim as the offer of ‘a place as unique as you’. Furthermore, it reassures us that “Men’s Shed is an international phenomenon with thousands of clubs worldwide” that answers “men’s innate need for activity”.
For them, Men’s Shed is a club, mainly for older guys, which has tools and materials for pursuing “interests and passions, for learning something new and sharing skills. We join to make stuff and tinker. We share a pot of coffee in a friendly atmosphere. In the end, we make friends and enjoy life.”
It looks like Josh might be onto something here, and especially from the point of view of being a foreigner who wants to make new friends, thereby having the social spiral working upward along with your social capital, rather than downward toward loneliness and isolation, miles away from your original home and the friends you made and knew there.
In further conversation with Josh, I was disabused of the preconceived notion that this might be more like a ‘men’s group’ than a ‘men’s shed’, where chairs encircle a box of tissues, and men process their emotional issues and past pain, which, by the way, I am all for and have indulged in years ago.
Catharsis, crying and cursing are unlikely to be a part of this new Men’s Shed branch in São Martinho do Porto, but who knows what might happen when a group of blokes get to know each other better and get to the real issues of modern masculinity, after weeks of activity-based banter.
“The key to our popularity,” say the more experienced Shed-dwellers of America, “is best expressed in our motto: Men don’t talk face to face, we talk shoulder to shoulder”. And, when put like this, makes complete sense. Though something of an eccentric and more solitary male, myself, who’s never found a home in a sports team or British boozing culture, I can see and have enjoyed the speed-dial mate network based on the familiarity of physical projects.
Josh knows what I mean, with that facility where you can “have someone to call, to go out for a beer, or if in a situation.” And beyond the day-to-day demands of unexpected flat batteries, desperately needing a lift, or finding out what Finanças are asking for in their latest letter to you, there is the ‘men’ in ‘men’-tal health aspect, that is especially helpful for us expats who have effected a self-inflicted excommunication by moving abroad.
“There’s a high correlation with someone who has that phone call available, and the happiness and longevity of their life,” adds Josh succinctly and soberingly.
Some, upon hearing about this idea, might understandably ask why we don’t just go to the pub or local bar and chat over beer. Whilst I have no problem with a bit of Sagres-based sulking or Bock-based banter, there is a particular kind of atmosphere that beer and bars can bring that might not make the most of the Men’s Shed mantra of ‘a place to go, something to do, and a regular time to hang out’.
With that manageable mission in mind, Josh and I are ready to roll. “Every group can define what it wants to do and who it wants to be,” Josh points out, should there be any concerns about underlying agendas. “It’s not ideological at all and women are absolutely welcome in these (gatherings) around the world.”
As co-founders, which it seems we are of the nascent SMdP Men’s Shed, where “the focus is gonna be on the activity, not necessarily each other”, we are especially keen to have local townsmen join us, who might like to share traditional skills with the incomers, who so love the local culture. Perhaps fishing and farming might then join the early activity suggestions of tying sailor knots, whittling wood, or chewing and spitting tobacco.
Apparently, it takes around 200 hours with somebody before you can consider them a close friend. This is clearly a problem for retirees, those working from home, and anyone resetting the conviviality clock in Portugal. But restart it shall in our local Parish Hall, here in my neck of the woods, where we look forward to honouring some of the lost needs of men, in these insanely stressful and unsettling times, far away from home.
Carl Munson is host of the Good Morning Portugal! show every weekday on YouTube and creator of www.learnaboutportugal.com, where you can learn something new about Portugal every day!
