ASL Community Service Day--Sunday Oct. 5th

It was a dark and stormy morning. A door slammed. The maid screamed. Suddenly, a shot rang out. Meanwhile, on the horizon, a pirate ship appeared...

Oops, apologies to both Bulwer-Lytton AND "Snoopy" of Peanuts fame, who is more directly quoted above.

It was a dark and stormy morning, however. A low-pressure system swirled in a circular pattern over the midsection of England. As Hubster and TeenE lay snug in their beds, BlogMama heeded the call of the alarm and pried herself out from under the duvet at 7:30 am.
This was because I had volunteered to be a team co-leader for the American School in London's semi-annual Community Service Day. The site I had chosen to lead a team of helpful volunteers reflects two of my passions, hospice care, and rummage sales. Yes, both are represented in one spot by the St. John's Hospice Charity Shop, situated on the "Hi" Street. This also had the added bonus of being a site we could walk to, which came in handy as our Jubilee Underground line was closed for "scheduled maintainance" and many other groups had to find other ways to get to their service sites.

This year, 341 people from the school volunteered. There were 61 high school students, many family groups, staff and teachers, and individual parents like me. There was a rah-rah kick-off meeting in the school's "Commons" (lunchroom) at 8:30 am, and then we all straggled out in the rain.

I was assigned a high school student as a co-leader. Mohammed had been a site leader at the Hospice Shop before, so he knew the manager there and what was expected of the team.
Our team had the two co-leaders, a family of four, a teacher, another high school student, and the shop manager's eleven year old son.

It was too rainy to get any planting of the back garden done, so we fanned out through the tiny shop, dusted and polished the bric-a-brac to within an inch of its life, color-coordinated the outfits, reorganized the displays, put price tags on shoes, etc. The manager had arranged hot chocolate from Harry Morgan's restaurant across the street, and a big box of Crispy Creme donuts, which they sell in the local mini-mart. After the sugar buzz wore off we were just about done anyway, so we left after about two hours so the shop could open at it usual Sunday noon time.

I told the manager that I will be back for a regular shift at the shop. That is how I will get my "rummage sale" fix while I am absent from the one at Plymouth Church in Belmont, Mass. Note to church rummagers: I tried to get the team to put on all the silly hats in the shop, but I am sad to say I failed to motivated them properly. Perhaps the presence of a high school photographer made them more self-conscious than usual..