A DAY IN THE LIFE OF ABBEY CENTRE CATERING

I decided to write this article to let you know what this little group do in the life of the Church.

Once a month we provide a lunch at a very reasonable price for the Parkinsons Disease Society Support Day. Approx 28 people attend this. Every 2 months the United Reformed Churches in Northampton district have a lunch and a speaker, approx 40 people come to this.

Then we have the 6 Stamp Fairs & 6 Postcard Fairs in the year! Whilst these bring in a good income for the Centre, it also means a lot of hard work. First of all, Malcolm & I sort out the tables on the Friday night. Stamp fairs are relatively easy, they are held in the Youth Hall and require about 30 tables plus chairs. Because the Hall is used until 10pm, we can’t start doing this until after that. Then I have to be there at 8am on the Saturday to let the dealers in. The Postcards use the Abbey Centre & have over 40 tables & these have to be fetched from all over the building where they are used through the week. Sometimes we can’t complete the setting up until after A C T have finished rehearsal.

So what has this to do with catering? Well, we provide refreshments throughout the day for the dealers and customers – just basic things like tea, coffee, cakes, scones, filled rolls and the all time favourite – bacon rolls!

Again Stamp Fairs are not very busy, but Postcards are all go. The real fun begins when the two fairs happen on the same day. First of all, we do not have enough tables so we use the versatile Stage System to make extra surfaces, which takes time & energy.

On January 31st , I opened up, switch on the urn, & then dealt with the battle of the tables! This resulted in constructing more of the Stage System in the Youth Hall. Paddy came in at 8.30 and started on the filled rolls, one tray for the Stamps & one for the Postcards. By 9 o’clock the urn was boiling and I made the tea/ coffee for the dealers (they have the first one ‘on the house’) & took orders for the Bacon rolls – 17 to start with! The dealers come from all over the country, from Essex, Oxford, Peterborough, Kings Lynn, Derby and even Yorkshire, so they are ready for something to eat. Then the buyers come in from 10am till about 3.30pm. Again, they come from all over, including on the train from London. So I was making more Bacon rolls for them. They are so keen to have them that they order them as they come in to ensure we haven’t run out of bacon. Peter and Eileen Shillingford came in at 11am to take over, so Paddy & I went home and left them to it. When I went back at 1.15pm, they had been so busy that they had run out of bread rolls, bacon & other fillings. This meant we had sold 54 bacon & 36 filled rolls.

In February we catered for a Ruby Wedding at the Cripps Centre & we are doing a wedding reception in June. The money raised from theses events provide all the kitchen equipment, such as new cookers when required & £500 was also donated to Youth @ Risk. If you would like to join this team of workers, please let me know ~~ we are always looking for extra helpers.

PAT JOHNSON (Catering Co-ordinator)