It’s 0635 a.m. on a wet and chilly Friday morning and I’m sitting at my temporary desk in Tucker Hall looking across the array of tables and filing cabinets, where the accounting office has taken up temporary residence, to a grey* and misty Witchduck Road. Why am I here you may ask? Let me tell you……..
Last Tuesday, 16 February, a willing band of brothers and sister (Ned Kuhns, Diane Miller and I) executed the long-awaited move of the accounting offices from their familiar spot in the office corridor to their temporary billet in Tucker Hall. You will recall the area in Tucker just outside the kitchen doors where there’s tiling on the floor so it’s okay to spill coffee, tea and anything else that might stain a carpet? That has now been transformed into an open plan office space to provide temporary housing for the Parish Administrator, accounting and your blogging correspondent leaving the office corridor empty of inhabitants so it can be refurbished. Many thanks to Dave Wilkinson for bringing the miracle of IT to all of us into Tucker Hall, so the beating heart of regular ODEC business can continue unabated, and thanks to everyone else who helped the accounting office prepare for their move. In the pictures above I’ve tried to capture the “operational-look” of Tucker Hall, might strike a note with anyone who has served in the military and been on deployment! That’s the background, now let’s fast forward to bright and early this morning, 19 Feb, that saw me heading up the road at an hour I had, since retirement, forgotten even existed to be on the ground in Tucker Hall to meet Scott Crumley and prepare for the arrival of the work “crew,” due in at 0700 a.m. This “crew” will, over the next two or three days, be stripping the old carpet, tiles and assorted glues from the floors in the corridor, the offices and the printer/copier room. To do this the “crew” will also have to shuffle furniture, file cabinets and sundry items around the spaces so they can get at the offending floors, rather like that game where you move little tiles around a small, framed board until they align into a picture or well know phrase. Just after 0700 a.m. and the “crew,” a band of three, is on site. I really don’t envy them, shuffling all the kit and caboodle around is a big enough job in itself but adding to that the task of lifting carpet and then hand scraping off the underlying glue is quite a mission. Then, of course, there’s the debris to be disposed of, not just pieces of carpet but also the plastic tiles under the carpet and then flakes of glue under that. It’s 0710 a.m. and time to give the “crew” a quick briefing on what they can and can’t do. The “can” is easy, they can do anything they like in the corridor and offices, it’s their space for the next few days. The “can’t” is straightforward as well, they can’t take anything that’s covered in dust out of the corridor into the rest of the building, that narrows their options down to the contents of Mother Ashley’s office where, rather wisely, the door has been kept closed so everything is dust free. 0830 a.m. and the “crew” are hard at it. What remains of the carpet in the Angel’s office is already gone, all of the cardboard boxes in the corridor (mostly the contents of Father Bob’s shelves) have been stacked back on the shelves and shrouded in plastic sheeting, the Parish Admin office is empty and more plastic sheeting is being used to seal off the area. It’s time to leave the “crew” to do what they do best and take a short “blogging browse” elsewhere. The rear wing has, as you may know, been waiting for its ceiling tiles and carpet for some time and in this past week that time arrived. Ceiling tiles have been hung and carpet installed, and the result is quite spectacular. Aside from the new accounting office suit there are four spaces in the rear wing. Three of these spaces are rooms of varying sizes, each well-lit with natural light and each offering the promise of a multitude of uses from the small meeting or educational event to the largest room that could easily host a function. The fourth space is the toddler and nursey room divided in two so the cribs have a dedicated area of their own. In each room there is a wall that picks out a colour from the carpet that gives it all a very professional look. Back to the “crew,” it’s just after midday as I sit at my temporary desk, looking across the temporary open plan office to the back of Diane Miller’s (permanent) head as she works her fiscal magic in the accounting office’s temporary area. Down the corridor from Tucker the “crew” have the office corridor tightly sealed off with dire notices warning the casual bystander to stay away. From the depths of the corridor the sound of scraping can be heard, a sure sign that the “crew” are hard at it but exactly what that “it” is I can’t rightly say because I’m just a casual bystander! Stay safe and stay healthy, David Beach. "Grey" Brit for gray!
2 Comments
Chris Randall
2/24/2021 12:31:52 pm
David,
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Mal Higgins
3/31/2021 09:19:44 am
First I should say I have always been opposed to spelling "gray" with the alternate "grey".
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AuthorDavid Beach is our Building Project Manager, and has been an active part of our parish family for more than a decade. He is retired from NATO and the British Army and is a joy and blessing to all of us. Archives
July 2021
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