Life’s Rich Pattern

Calm your farm

BY LIZ FOSTER

The scout hall in bushland near my house has been unused for two decades. It’s still in good shape, but the barbecue, fire pit and access ramps have all fallen by the wayside. If you were camping, it would be good clean fun, but it is a council building after all and rules are rules.

Compare this to my infant school time in England. One day we all trooped off to my friend Jackie’s house, because they had a pool, a rare commodity there. Parents with cars (this was fifty years ago) were enlisted to ferry the kids over. We jumped in as one, with the odd lifesaver tossed in for kids that couldn’t swim. Parents must have been contacted somehow but permission slips and Working with Children checks were things of the distant future. Yes, we could have drowned or been farmed off for child labour, but we pulled through and lived to tell the tale.

Since the pandemic, the empty scout hall’s been joined by vast tracts of vacant office space. Big businesses are relinquishing whole floors to accommodate our new working from home culture. Despite trying to sublet the space, it begs the question – who will lease it? Instead of turning it over to residential conversions, here’s some thinking outside-the-box ideas for the space during these Covid challenged times. 1. Aged care facilities. There’s a national shortage of beds. Better still combine it with a childcare for maximum intergenerational benefits à là Old People’s

Home for 4-year-Olds. On your workdays you can pop in and see Gramps and your son in your lunch hour. 2. Pop up rave spaces for first year Uni students to party, interact and meet people their own age In Real Life. 3. 24-hour dark kitchens to train unemployed/homeless people in hospitality skills and help fill 46,000 vacant hospo jobs usually taken by international students and staff, making a tidy two for one. 4. Clinics to upskill home-based workers in domestic

WH&S (evacuation drills in the front garden, appointment of fire wardens, distribution of government-issue hard hats and hi vis). 5. Museums of the 20th century teaching anyone under thirty How We Used To Live (circular dial telephones that you physically hung up, waiting a whole week to watch your favourite show on the family telly, winding car windows down with handles etc etc.) 6. Balinese style spa clinics, replicating an away from home holiday experience in some small way. 7. Supermarkets. I can’t believe this hasn’t happened already. And a great use of the express lifts, off peak. 8. Zoom cafés (like the all but defunct internet cafés).

Complete with sound proofed booths. Aged care residents from level twelve can pop down to connect with loved ones. 9. Martial arts studios, so you can expend all your pent-up irritation from the abundance of zoom calls you’re now having. 10. Growing hydroponic marijuana pods. The dual benefit of creating an R&R activity for stressed office workers/ aged care residents resulting in calm-inducing whacky baccy. If it all goes to pot (pun intended) and the boys in blue get wind of it, they can be easily dispersed to hide behind the rooftop garden aspidistras. Now I think of it, there was some unusual greenery through the scout hall windows last time I passed, and the local rangers did seem super chill…

Illustration by Grace Kopsiaftis

Liz Foster is a local writer and author. You can find more Life’s Rich Pattern features and more at www.lizfosterwriter.com