Maxine discovered that the men in the shed communicated differently from the women in the club. The men would talk occasionally while they worked, but they rarely had the sorts of long, confiding conversations that women did. Men’s talk seemed to Maxine like surface conversation, yet it ended up creating an environment of comfort and familiarity. In his book The Men’s Shed Movement: The Company of Men, Barry Golding described it: “Women talk face to face while men talk shoulder to shoulder.”20 As time went on, the men’s group grew to ten. The shed became their refuge from a world where they
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