AS well as celebrating his 66th birthday last Friday, it also marked Denis O’Donovan’s last day working with Cork County Council after 30 years.
While there was no function to celebrate the occasion, Denis was inundated by the well wishes from his colleagues and bosses at Cork County Council and from the general public.
Denis started working with the Council in 1990 and his work involved putting up the signs for surface dressing, painting, gardening around the council office in Bandon and emptying litter bins in Innishannon.
‘I was never doing the same work and I used to move from pillar to post all the time,’ Denis told The Southern Star.
‘I’ll miss being out and about meeting people which was the best part of my job and of course my work colleagues as we always got on fine and had the craic.’
When Covid hit last year, Denis was redeployed to community work in the early days and it was something he really enjoyed.
‘I had to deliver prescriptions to people out in the countryside because I had the council van. It was great meeting people especially the elderly and they appreciated the company as they wouldn’t see anyone else on any given day. I enjoyed having chats with them and it was important for them too.’
Denis was also a familiar sight on the streets of Bandon every Sunday morning with his brush and sweeper.
‘I used to clean the streets on Sunday morning and they’re not so bad now as the pubs and nightclubs are closed but when they were open it was pretty bad. It would take me about four hours to clean up.’
Now that he will have free time on his hands, his first plan is to tackle his garden and he will decide down the line what he would like to do.
‘Hopefully I’ll be vaccinated and my wife Veronica and I can go up the country for a holiday maybe or visit my sister in Louth.’
Denis and his colleagues would have loved to have had a few pints in Chaplin’s Bar to mark both his retirement and his birthday but he is hopeful they can do that once the country opens up again.
