Holiday Days

Apologies up front, this is (probably unnecessarily) long.

I nipped down to Dundee today to see my mum and dad, have lunch at the fantastic pop up cafe at the church in Fintry and retrieve the little ones.

For the past five or six years the church in Fintry has held a week of activities during the school summer holidays, with everything from bicycle repair workshops, community question times, pet clinics, international evenings, quiz nights, gorilla gardening and the usual round of activities for toddlers and their carers, as well as children and older young people.

The church is set physically right in the middle of the post war housing estate and has played host to many significant events in the life of the area. Along with Her Maj, the church are celebrating their diamond jubilee this year and as part of that this time the week long celebration has included an exhibition on the life of the estate and a talk by the city archivist on the history of the area.

As interesting as all this is, the real draw for me is the little cafe which pops up every July and which has grown year on year. A few years back a friend and I pretty much bank rolled the cafe with our daily purchases of mid morning coffee and scones followed by lunch boxes for our little ones and toasties for ourselves but it has got more and more popular. It can get quite cramped during the lunchtime rush nowadays and as volunteers struggle to remember what you have ordered or find it hard to add up your bill you couldn't exactly call the service first class, but the food is always fantastic, the home-baking pretty much second to none and at £12 for lunch for 5, including drinks, coffee and cakes, it is value you'd struggle to match.

After lunch as my mum and I took the boys off to the park, we left a church buzzing with activity; some folks were reminiscing about past years in the exhibition space while others tinkered around with a number of model railways nearby, a work party was busy sawing wood and hammering nails in a previously unused area of the building which is currently being transformed into a lounge, numerous others were painting a stain-glass picture and sewing banners, the kitchen crew were having a late lunch, three teenage girls were hanging out in the foyer, listening to music and chatting about making their own jewellery and a group of specially invited elderly (and in some cases almost housebound) folk were arriving for an afternoon of light entertainment and high tea.

It would seem that it is more than just the physical presence of the building that makes the church here a significant feature of the local community.

Anyway, after all that my photo doesn't really fit! This is a scene from our afternoon trip to the park where we happened to meet a senior pupil that my mum recently taught. The bright, friendly young man arrived from Pakistan with his family just a year or so ago and has apparently fitted into school life here brilliantly. He certainly had the knack of rounding up a motley crew of would-be footballers who were hanging around and arranging a kick about. My two little ones were delighted to be invited into the game and the enjoyed the attention of the bigger boys.

My littlest even did a good job of holding his own on the pitch and I got a taste of Saturday mornings to come, standing chatting on the sidelines (which will be fine if all the days are as sunny and warm as today).