When childcare workers crack (Beaufort Street Festival 2012 #2)

Monday. The laptops cranked, the email avalanche has begun, and the mobile chimes through a reminder that the first meeting of the week is only ten minutes away. As another long week stretches before you there’s only one thing to do …

Grin and Bear it

and ponder that …

Nothing is unbearable

These were just two of the inspirational messages featured in street art at the Beaufort Street Festival. This one was designed by members of the Beaufort Street Community Centre http://www.beaufortstcommunitycentre.org.au/ .

As I stood back admiring the menagerie of bears I pondered …

Whether by 2pm on the last Monday in November 2012, the toddlers at the Community Centre had pushed the boundaries once too often. Had the dazed childcare workers finally been pushed to their limits?

By 3pm …

By 3pm, attempting to instil calm once more, the workers threatened their intimates with the expulsion of their favourite fluffy toys. However knowing a hollow threat when they’d heard one, the inmates continued on in their terrorising ways.

The same threat echoed through the Centre on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, until Friday …

With the toddlers taking no heed, the exhausted workers gathered up every bear in sight, marched down to the Beaufort Street Festival and took immense delight in stringing up each and every one of them (the bears that is, not the inmates).

Clearly no longer a hollow threat, silence and sanity slowly returned to the Centre, as the wide eyed inmates returned to the docile creatures their parents had introduced on their first day.

And still I ponder …

Will the bears survive in the wild? How long will it take for them to revert back to their natural ways? When they do will the good people of Beaufort Street be safe?
All the years of hugging, crying, dropping, throwing, sucking and childhood memories wrapped up in each bear. One way or another it’s always the much loved fluffy toy who ultimate pays the price.
Being part of the team that gave birth the HBF’s Ted, it was a delight to see him included in the mix…although his position at the bottom of the pile (see photo on the right) was a tad troublesome. Perhaps if he’d displayed more deva-like qualities, deserved of the TV star he is, he might have made it further up the tree.

More about community spirit and the Beaufort Street Festival see https://www.theponderroom.com/2012/11/when-other-c-word-goes-mainstream.html