I spent a day helping with the setup of a building for Crisis Open Christmas. This is a charity that helps the homeless, providing, for a week over Christmas, not just a roof, a bed, and three hot meals a day, but also medical care, legal advice, a decent haircut, job advice, IT access, and just ... listening ...
This was set-up: the centre wasn't yet open. It was due to open in three days time. Things were being delivered. The building, an empty office block, was being remodelled in lightning quick time into a hostel, by a team of carpenters, painters, plumbers, and general volunteers. Everything was chaos.
It was a bit like being in an online game.
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You are at the front doors. The front doors will not open. You do not have the key card.
You go to the loading dock. The loading dock doors are broken but can be opened. There are CCTV screens here and power saws and walkie talkies.
A shipment has arrived. There are industrial sized cookers. Your task for this round is to get these from the loading dock on the ground floor to the cooking area on the first floor. You cannot get them up the steps.
There are two large cargo lifts down to the basement. You cannot get the first one to work.
The second one is blocked by a parked car. The keys are in the car.
Solution: push the car into the second lift, take it to the basement and lose it there.
Then push the cookers into the lift, take them to the basement, then roll them to another smaller lift which goes to the first floor.
But the blasted carpenter has already constructed plywood walls around what will be the "kitchen" and you cannot get the cookers in.
You are on the first floor. There are crates of books and cups of tea and protective gloves and sheets of coloured plastic and duct tape and power tools and chairs here.
You may need some of these things later...
Three pallets of ancient computers have arrived. The fork lift for moving the pallets cannot get them into the smaller lift. You have to unpack them and carry them one by one...
And so on...
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It was quite fun actually, making some of it up as we went along. I spent half an hour moving steel dexion library shelving from one place to another ... and the guy carrying the other end of the shelves with me was Chris Martin from Coldplay. He's a regular Crisis supporter. Not that I am a fan of Coldplay, but even so....
I hope the guests like it. I'm hoping to see it all in action at one point, if I can get there, maybe on 28th.
