Tea Lady

The street view of the building I will be based in. It looks better when embiggened.

After 6+ years of trying to have my own business, not doing very well, looking for other employment, failing and wondering what to do about it all, I was offered a job this week.

The Salvation Army in Australia is restructuring and their Sydney bible college is living through uncertain times. The college has two arms: one training future ministers and one offering vocational training (such as chaplaincy studies) to the general public. The training for ministers will all be done in Melbourne from 2019 and nobody is sure what will happen to the vocational training. The once bustling campus has empty buildings and a skeleton staff. A friend of mine is the Principal of the campus and asked if I would be interested in a role which mostly involves organising morning tea for the community. The position is really all about raising morale. There are people already on-site who could easily add morning tea to their existing duties or it could be done by roster but for whatever reasons, those things don't seem to have worked in the past and my friend was emphatic that an orderly morning tea area and a pleasant atmosphere is of huge importance to the team.
The position is for 15 hours a week, so not a lot of hours and spread over at least 3 days, it's the kind of thing most people just don't want to bother with but for me it will be a good thing and I would be able to take a day off to attend a birthing client, should it be necessary so I can continue with doula-ing to the extent that it is available to me.

One of my daughters asked if I was going to do "fun things" with the morning teas. I'm not sure what she meant but in a similar vein I had myself wondered if a little jar with a flower in it on each table would be over the top.

I'm really no food person but somehow it keeps cropping up in my life. You might remember  that I used to prepare the morning tea for the church play group. I also organised morning tea for the church congregation in the last days before we amalgamated. Now, this. And again in the last days.

The house I grew up in and my parents still live in, backs onto the campus. Dad bought the land from The Salvation Army before I was born. In my very youngest years the property was a children's home, closed when the care of state wards was transferred to family situations, in the 70s. The property was converted into the new bible college and I remember when the college was opened by the Governor General. I remember the matron in starched apron who ran the now deserted kitchen/ dining room with an iron fist. That area will now be my domain, used for occasional functions or team lunches.

When a couple of palings fell off the fence, I was able leave our place through a back gate, cross the college playing field and duck through the fence on a shortcut to primary school. I also walked around the edge of the playing field to my grandparents house.

I have had an on/ off association with the place for most of my life so it is a privilege to be there for this period. I hope these are days of transition, rather than death.