Jankyville Community Centre
Mar. 26th, 2026 09:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseI have felt for quite some time that this place needs a better online alias than "New Town"; so from here on I'm going to refer to it as Jankyville, which sums it up pretty adequately. I've now lived here for the best part of seven years; but today is an exciting day, for our (truly hideous) new community centre is finally opening. Yesterday was the food bank's last session in the Portakabin, and this morning Val, our lead volunteer, is overseeing the move into the new building; apparently we were supposed to move yesterday afternoon, immediately following the session, but in true Jankyville fashion they realised they hadn't got the fire extinguishers in place in the new building yet, and it's illegal to use a public building till those are fully installed. So they were hastily installing them while we were handing out food yesterday. (I'm also told that the new building is very nice on the inside, despite being so ugly from the outside. I'm not sure why they had to make it that ugly, but it's probably an architect thing. At least it doesn't have those weird coloured panels in no particular order that seem so popular among architects these days, although the schools do.)
When I first arrived here, we had this thing called "The Wing", which was part of the original primary school (there are now two primary schools, the new one having been built in the last couple of years). This served as the community centre, and it was small but just about adequate for the size the community was at that point. Our church met in there, which is quite hard to imagine now; even then it could be a bit of a squash sometimes, and there's no way we'd all fit in there these days. However, the primary school decided it needed the space back sooner than anyone else had anticipated, so for several months we were without a community centre at all. This was pretty disastrous, to be honest. The groups who could afford it, and for whom it was practical, moved out to the secondary school, which is about 20 minutes away by mobility scooter, significantly more than that if you're walking with small children... so the parent and toddler groups took a body blow. Both the food bank and our church did likewise; our church is still there, but it was really not a good venue for the food bank (even though we didn't have to pay because of the nature of what we do). We were on the top floor, so it was awkward for people to find and they'd have to go through the embarrassment of asking at reception; and even if they already knew where we were, there was still a significant lack of privacy, because if you were an adult turning up at the school on a Wednesday afternoon it was obvious what you were there for.
So the food bank temporarily decamped to one of the neighbouring villages, which was far better for most of our visitors but quite awkward for me to get to, and in fact after Sibyl blew in the middle of a session and I had to be hastily driven home, I had to put my volunteer duties on hold (by mutual agreement) till we were able to return to Jankyville. Thanks a whole bunch, Sibyl.
Eventually they put up a Portakabin and went "there you go, we have a community centre for the time being, and now we're going to build a proper one". In any sensible place they'd have built the proper one right at the start, but this is Jankyville, and it is not a sensible place. The Portakabin wasn't bad after they fixed the leaky roof it arrived with; it was still a bit small, albeit much bigger than The Wing, but it was comfortable and it had decent air conditioning, which, given what the summers tend to be like here, was a very good thing. As a food bank, we were pretty happy with it. We were there quite a long time, and I thought it was going to be a lot longer; but they did, in fact, start building the new centre. Eventually.
And now here it is. Val says the space we have for the food bank is really good; there's plenty of room to set everything up, and we have spacious secure storage, which is essential (we run on Wednesday afternoons and the food is delivered on Tuesdays, so of course it has to be kept somewhere). I don't get to see it for just under four weeks; I'm on the rota every other week, but I won't be there in two weeks as I'll be on the way to the funeral. Well, that's something to look forward to.
My remaining question is: if it takes seven years to get a proper community centre, how long does it take to get shops?
When I first arrived here, we had this thing called "The Wing", which was part of the original primary school (there are now two primary schools, the new one having been built in the last couple of years). This served as the community centre, and it was small but just about adequate for the size the community was at that point. Our church met in there, which is quite hard to imagine now; even then it could be a bit of a squash sometimes, and there's no way we'd all fit in there these days. However, the primary school decided it needed the space back sooner than anyone else had anticipated, so for several months we were without a community centre at all. This was pretty disastrous, to be honest. The groups who could afford it, and for whom it was practical, moved out to the secondary school, which is about 20 minutes away by mobility scooter, significantly more than that if you're walking with small children... so the parent and toddler groups took a body blow. Both the food bank and our church did likewise; our church is still there, but it was really not a good venue for the food bank (even though we didn't have to pay because of the nature of what we do). We were on the top floor, so it was awkward for people to find and they'd have to go through the embarrassment of asking at reception; and even if they already knew where we were, there was still a significant lack of privacy, because if you were an adult turning up at the school on a Wednesday afternoon it was obvious what you were there for.
So the food bank temporarily decamped to one of the neighbouring villages, which was far better for most of our visitors but quite awkward for me to get to, and in fact after Sibyl blew in the middle of a session and I had to be hastily driven home, I had to put my volunteer duties on hold (by mutual agreement) till we were able to return to Jankyville. Thanks a whole bunch, Sibyl.
Eventually they put up a Portakabin and went "there you go, we have a community centre for the time being, and now we're going to build a proper one". In any sensible place they'd have built the proper one right at the start, but this is Jankyville, and it is not a sensible place. The Portakabin wasn't bad after they fixed the leaky roof it arrived with; it was still a bit small, albeit much bigger than The Wing, but it was comfortable and it had decent air conditioning, which, given what the summers tend to be like here, was a very good thing. As a food bank, we were pretty happy with it. We were there quite a long time, and I thought it was going to be a lot longer; but they did, in fact, start building the new centre. Eventually.
And now here it is. Val says the space we have for the food bank is really good; there's plenty of room to set everything up, and we have spacious secure storage, which is essential (we run on Wednesday afternoons and the food is delivered on Tuesdays, so of course it has to be kept somewhere). I don't get to see it for just under four weeks; I'm on the rota every other week, but I won't be there in two weeks as I'll be on the way to the funeral. Well, that's something to look forward to.
My remaining question is: if it takes seven years to get a proper community centre, how long does it take to get shops?
