This is a momentous column. It’s the first one written AT Mitchell’s. Until now, according to the fantastic builder, I’ve only been a” ghost writer” writing at home, but now I’m here and it’s all happening.
As I write this, two builders are bringing in their tools and taking out yesterday’s rubbish, and three exhausted Netherlanders are making their way up from their temporary homes in town. Various other volunteers are waking up and thinking “well, we’re nearly done…” and one young lady who I shan’t embarrass with her name, she must surely be pulling out her hair in clumps. I am sitting on our new window-seat eating raisins.
Community projects can be somewhat like warfare – the vast majority of your time is spent waiting (for funds, for meetings, for supplies, for builders, for more meetings) with brief bursts of intense, traumatic activity.
Here that has meant two years of fundraising and meetings and eating biscuits – don’t get me wrong, a lot of very hard work has been done, just not by me, and not with belt-sanders. Now we’re all mucking in because we have some money, motivation, and a nice solid deadline.
The back kitchen is unrecognisable, having been… well, I don’t know the ins-and-outs of the building trade but they’ve clearly worked miracles. A week ago it was somewhere the Most Haunted team would spend a night talking about the tortured souls of long-dead bakers. Now it’s all naked wood and pink plaster.
(Why is it, incidentally, that so much to do with the building trade is pink? They’re not known for their femininity, builders. Is it a conspiracy to motivate them to get finished quicker perhaps? Maybe if plasterboard had a floral pattern and overalls had lace cuffs they’d be even faster? “ere terry, get that second shelf up so we can get down the pub and restore our masculinity”…)
The shop side of things is pretty special too. We (and by “we” I do very much mean that I watched) brought down some furniture from upstairs, so now we have a counter, behind which I feel very at home, and a set of drawers lined with newspaper from 1960. It has a headline asking whether Liverpool should have a bridge or a tunnel to cross the Mersey.
We have beautiful original Victorian tiles on the walls, a chute that the original baker poured flour down, and a bench to sit outside on. The bench is a stroke of utter genius, seeing as we have the best view in Anfield. Fred and Angela need credit for that. They’re local experts and project stalwarts. Now they have somewhere nice to sit and appreciate Anfield. Wonder how long they’ve been waiting for that.
The idea is that of a sunny day, one can sit on the bench and watch the world go by and play Liverpool FC bingo. That’s where you guess the nationality of visitors, and try to collect a continent. I just made it up. I doubt it will catch on
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