Christmas in the cafe.
On behalf of all the team I’d like to wish you all a jolly Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
To give all our volunteer helpers and bakers time with family and friends the cafe will be closed over the festive period from Christmas eve with the exception of Boxing day, reopening on 1st January. Therefore, over the festive period the opening hours for the cafe will be:
- Christmas Eve and Christmas Day: closed
- Boxing Day: 10-14 (don’t forget the swim at 11)
- Sunday 27th to 31st: closed
- Friday 1st January: 10-18 (fireworks at 17.00)
- Saturday 2nd January back to normal.
Time for a cafe co-ordinator
In our discussions with the District Council over the future for the Park they have floated the idea of extending our licence for a further 12 months to March 2017. This is really encouraging, but we feel we cannot expect those volunteers who took on the responsibility of setting up and running the café at such short notice to keep smiling whilst putting in quite so many hours on an open-ended basis.
With your help, we want to ensure the café continues to play its part in the community of Cromer and would like to use this opportunity to develop the role of a paid café co-ordinator for the remainder of our current term. We would do this without changing the way the café operates. With the support of the café management team, the café coordinator will build on the success of the special character you have helped create in the café.
We want to be flexible in our appointment, but would expect the position (which could be a job share) to be 20-25 hours a week, including several sessions running the café and taking on the ‘behind the scenes’ work of organising the volunteers and stock management. For the right person this could extend into a further (at least) 12 month opportunity.
Before we advertise this position wider, we wanted you all to know about this change, and to give you the opportunity to come forward for the position. If you want to know more details please get in touch cafe@northlodgepark.org.uk, or pop into the cafe and speak to one of the team.
Children’s Play Area
In anticipation of the survey confirming our thinking that the children’s play area will still be your top priority, we will be setting up a working group in the new year to develop and implement a plan for this project so we can have something in place for next summer.
To widen the involvement of the community, to make sure we have the right people on the project and to make sure we are working on the right project we want your help. If you have the skills, ideas and time to actively help with the project please let us know. There will be lots to do: defining what we want, drawing up specifications, talking to suppliers, fund raising and lots of practice drinking coffee in the cafe (there has to be some reward for all that hard work!). There will be a project kick-off meeting the first week in January.
We’re keeping the survey open to the end of January to give you the opportunity to discuss with your family and friends over the Christmas dinner, As well as completing the survey, if you have ideas and thoughts do send them to us, either by email, post, or fill in the ideas book in the cafe.
Hope to see you soon
Barry Meadows