It’s somewhere residents from both Avon Court and Bourne House can come together to join in activities, and it’s available to both homes whenever they need it.  We have comfortable lounges in both homes, and quieter destination lounges on each household for residents to use as they like.  The coffee shop will be available for bigger crowds, and there’s often something lively going on, like bingo this morning.

We’ve taken out the curved wall along the middle of the room and divided the space of the busy coffee shop and a cosier area with armchairs.  It was nice to have the defined areas, but we started to find it limiting.  Now that we’ve been able to open up the area, we’ll be much more flexible.  And we’ve kept our piano and the cosy corner that can be moved easily if we need to, for example when we have a singer visiting.

Next week, our first performer since the revamp will be one of our favourites, Mike Sidaway.  He’ll get to test out the acoustics in the rearranged room, and there will be space for a much bigger audience as our numbers grow.

We’ve also invested in a super-size television, mounted on the wall, so we can watch all the big events together on the big screen.  We’re thinking the Castle Pub will be a brilliant sports bar for the world cup!