Justin Ranger & Ian Martin
I moved to Plymouth in 2000… I have three jobs. I kind of run this site [Hungry Bear cafe], behind-the-scenes stuff, I do a lot of cooking, and shopping today. And I’m also a drama therapist and I work in residential care for the elderly… I’m also learning Czech at the moment. My brother lives in the Czech Republic. It’s been 10 minutes everyday, doing Duolingo. – Justin Ranger
I love being creative. I have very little time to be creative. This is the most creative we’ve been in the last few years. And all the decorating and all the work to create the place, kind of crossing hobbies with work… Everything we do here is trying to do the best we can for the planet in terms of knowing where everything comes from, making everything we can, if we cannot find processed things. And I think that is, a little bit, every day, asking “ How can we do better”? – Justin
I think the Blockhouse is one of those things that’s hidden away but because it’s high you get views over things. Pretty nice to look out when you’re in the middle streets around this area. You can be anywhere ,you get up onto the blockhouse, and you can you can really see a lot of Plymouth in the history. – Justin
I moved down here from London in 2017… on the rare times where we’ve got time off that lines up and we’re not both exhausted, it’s going out and trying to find some nice places locally to eat. It’s obviously nice to check out what other people are doing locally. Again, crossing over work, but there’s a lot of interesting things happening down here, but you’ve often got to scratch the surface to find them. – Ian Martin
I live out on the Moors, so I get a fairly good work-life balance of getting outdoor time. The rest of it’s just imagining what I would do if I had free time!… Just very creative pursuits, like, tried a bit of ballroom at the end of last year. Trying to find a choir that I can get into. – Ian
It’s the one-on-one interactions I’m having with people, because that was really missing from my life beforehand, working as a store manager for retail. And while I’ve met a lot of people [before], it just wasn’t meaningful. Where as, doing this, I get to actually have, you know, face-to-face chats about interesting topics and finding out about people just makes such a big difference to my well being mental health and just feeling more connected. – Ian