Days in the life of the Mountbatten Café 

During her last visit to Mountbatten Tia spent a few days in the Mountbatten café. When she arrived, at opening time on Monday, Jackie, the Café Manager, was at a corner table, diary open in front of her. Jackie was working out the complex weekly schedule for the volunteers who are the Café’s backbone. (During these two days Tia met quite a few of these remarkable folks, one of whom kindly took Tia on a tour of the beautiful Mountbatten Gardens –volunteers donate their time across a range of jobs throughout this hospice including gardening and greeting at the reception area). The Café volunteers serve food, make coffees and teas, clear up, and generally distribute bonhomie to everyone and anyone who might happen upon this scene.

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So, over the course of two days, Tia drank a lot of excellent coffee and tea, ate a very rich brownie and some very good sandwiches, and succumbed to temptation over a delicious piece of red velvet cake (the one that very quickly sells out when they take it to bake sales and events and the one that she should have photographed but too quickly ate instead!). Her aim was to experience the Café’s atmosphere. She remembers her experience in fragments – images, bits of conversation, smells and sounds. Pieced back together, but in somewhat random order, they would make, or so she thinks, a special kind of Radio Play (A Day in the Life of a Hospice Café).…

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Amidst laughter, coming from somewhere (the gym? Its door is open) there is regular chat between volunteers and customers …

‘Do you want sprinkles on that’? 

‘Today it’s coronation chicken, tuna salad, cheese, ham and salad…’ 

There is the regular ping of different people’s mobile phones…. 

The coffee machine hisses. 

‘I spy with my little eye…beginning with M’ says a child….

‘We saw a lot of boats today on the way in’.

Volunteers lay tables for luncheon. Fresh flowers are added to each table. Bright yellow placemats….

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One café volunteer to another: ‘In a minute could you come and carry the dinner?’

‘Yes, June was quite warm’.

‘The special today is fish pie’

Piano music wafts along from the lounge. Someone, it turns out to be a volunteer musician, is playing the Moody Blues piano…It sounds, from a distance, like a bit of J. S. Bach….

‘I bet your going to have ice cream again’. 

‘We have a lot of fun here. We have good laughs and lots of fun and it’s lovely. It’s a very nice place to come to’. 

‘Chips with your fish pie? Well, it comes with it doesn’t it?’.

‘One day at a time, as they say. You have to take each day’.

‘Look at the flowers. One of the ladies who helps in the kitchen, she also helps in the gardens’.

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Jackie, taking a photo of one of the volunteers at the Choir Summer Showcase Concert (Photo: TD)

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Thursday morning. Jackie was out late the night before in support of the Mountbatten Choir’s Summer Showcase Concert (there were, of course, delicious nibbles + wine or juice at the interval). Jackie speaks to the room-at-large as she glides around the café making her rounds. (Her fitbit device registered 22,103 steps (that is about 10 miles) the day before, the day of the evening concert). Tia hears her says something like, ‘So I’m running on less than my normal powers… Three quarters…’ (She had also come in early that morning for a breakfast club, so – late night, early morning.) 

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Normal powers, normal day… In a film about Mountbatten, released in the week Tia visited (Your Mountbatten Stories), six people who have personally experienced Mountbatten’s care, either for themselves or someone they love, speak about that experience. One of them describes how, as he sees it, the folks at this hospice, ‘really do love what they do. You can tell. The nurses, the doctors, the volunteers…’  

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Tia puts to Jackie that this is the hub of the organisation – it’s the public-facing, sustenance-giving, social headquarters, staffed almost entirely by volunteers. It’s located right at the heart of the John Cheverton Centre, opposite the gym, adjacent to the lounge, open to the garden… It’s available 365 days a year. It does a lavish afternoon tea. It’s can be hired for private parties. It does Sunday lunches. It does a full-on Christmas lunch. And everything it serves is garnished with generous portions of  – love. 

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