… like serving customers or playing on the till: there’s a whole world of hard work going on behind the scenes. Meet Keith Hawkins, our new volunteer maintenance manager. Keith moved into Ilmington seven years ago and thought he’d retired, until he ran into certain members of the Ilmington Community Shop committee… “I was lured into it, in the belief that I could help with maintenance!” he laughs. “They said ‘can you coordinate the whole lot?’ and now it’s grown arms and legs!” Keith, a Scot who used to be head of customer service and other serious roles at National Grid, can now be found manoeuvring a Karcher around the café terrace or heading up a crack village painting team. “It’s a genuinely good feeling giving something back to the community,” he says. “Cleaning the terrace should have taken me two hours. The amount of people who stopped me and said “thank you, it’s looking brilliant’, it took about six!” Keith’s handiness comes from renovating three houses and copying the builders. “I’m good at very little, he says modestly, “but I can turn my hand to a little bit of everything.” Of course, he’d like to recruit more handy folk to his team. “We generated a maintenance plan from people’s wish lists. My ambition is to get many people to share the jobs so the shop isn’t entirely reliant on me.” The immediate focus is to reopen the café safely by the end of the month. “You think you’re doing a Herculean task,” says Keith, “but every time you come up to the shop, you find people doing more than you: Lee tending the garden, Geoff building a wall… In a village like this, it gives you a kick to add some value back.” Enthusiasm is the main qualification required to join Keith’s merry maintenance team. Ask in the shop or call 01608 682838 and we’ll put you in touch
