Let’s just have a nice cup of tea: The story of a community working together to raise awareness about dementia and funding for much-needed support services....By Cass Alexander
Alzheimers New Zealand
In the midst of a hectic conference, where I was seen with a mobile phone in each ear, organising television crews and frantically answering journalists’ questions about a new dementia drug subsidy, I was approached by the calm-looking president of Alzheimers Marlborough.
Diane Johnson grabbed me, while I grabbed an on-the-run muffin and a cup of coffee and said,
“Cass, we’ve got something big we think would do wonders for publicity during Awareness and Appeal Week. Something really big.”
She promised to fly me across the Cook Straight (the stretch of the Pacific Ocean which divides New Zealand’s North and South islands) to tell me more about this ‘something big,’ at a later date.
I think I caught her say something about ‘tea caddies’. In my already over-active mind was an image of Tiger Woods pushing a whole lot of trays with tea cups and saucers.
But then when I told someone about Diane’s proposal a few days later, I was informed a tea caddy looked something like this:
And that’s when I realised I’d seen them all over the place, in opportunity (thrift) shops, at my grandmother’s house, even lurking at the back of the cupboards at home as dusty relics from previous tenants.
When I cleared my desk at work and called Diane, she informed me a local chap in Blenheim, Marlborough (the beautiful wine country at the top of New Zealand’s South Island), by the name of Graham Brooks had around 2,000 tea caddies stored in boxes in his chicken coop.
“Graham thinks it might be the largest collection in the world,” Diane told me.He had trawled through the online community of tea caddy collectors (!) and surmised his collection might just top them all.
Graham had been collecting for 35 years, after his mother-in-law gave him a caddy for Christmas and then another for his birthday.
A friend visited his house and said, “you’ve got a great collection of caddies there” and suddenly, those few gifts plus the few more Graham had collected amounted to a collection and from there, Graham made the conscious decision to be a caddy collector.
He brought caddies back from Australia, Europe, America, even Jamaica. At his house (where he also has collections of Girls Annuals, cigarette cases and Charles Dickens original editions), Graham told me a story about working for a mate in Brisbane, Australia, fixing an air conditioning unit in a mall, where he discovered a shop full of caddies – “There were about 500 or 600 of them, I reckon. I purchased the big ones and got out quick,” he said. Later, he discovered the tea caddy shop had burnt down.
Traditionally, local Alzheimers New Zealand organisations throughout the country host a campaign called “Cuppa for a Cause” as part of Awareness and Appeal Week.
These “cuppas” bring people together for a hot beverage in exchange for a donation, which goes back to helping people with dementia and their families. This year for their “cuppa”, Graham suggested to the ladies at Alzheimers Marlborough they might want to have something for people to look at as a draw card while they sipped their cup of tea.
Alzheimers Marlborough got to work, booked space at the historic Blenheim Club (established in 1903 – and that is historic, for New Zealand), called in a favour from Wellington antiques specialist Peter Wedde, made up posters, contacted the local radio stations for promotion and appealed to organisations in the community to supply refreshments for the opening night.
Then Graham decided to take it one step further. He sent off details of the collection to Guinness World Records, suggesting he may just have the largest collection. At 1,815 caddies, it did turn out to be the largest collection in the world -- he’s just awaiting official verification now.
What began as a grand idea came to fruition, culminating in a room full of caddies open to the public after committee members, friends and partners spent hours unpacking box upon box, counting caddies in the process.
“The collection looked massive after only 500 caddies had been unpacked. As long as Alzheimers Marlborough got some money out of it and people saw it, that’s the most important thing. The world record bit was to help generate publicity for the cause,” said Graham.The opening night, where the display was debuted with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, was a great success, with over 100 guests in attendance. Peter Wedde, who opened the ceremony, told tales of days gone by, with giggles and clapping from the crowd, many of whom remembered the personalities and idiosyncrasies of small town life in the 1960s.
Amongst the collection was even an unopened box of tea from the same issue Sir Edmund Hillary took up Mount Everest.
A tea caddy box from an issue Sir Edmund Hillary took up Mount Everest
After opening night, the collection was on display for the whole of Awareness Week (12-18 July 2010) so people could have a cup of tea and a lamington (a sponge cube coated in chocolate or raspberry icing and coconut) for seven bucks, or see the display only for two.
Lamingtons
Radio New Zealand’s Jim Mora, of the “Afternoons” show caught up with Graham about the collection and interest in the story escalated as far as Los Angeles. Local papers, the Marlborough Express and Marlborough Midweek covered the event and its lead-up extensively and turned up on opening night to celebrate with the team.
Events like this don’t just come out of thin air. None of it could have happened without strong local involvement and an existing awareness in that community of what dementia is, how it affects people and what Alzheimers Marlborough does to make peoples’ lives easier.
Some of the profile building in the Blenheim community was due to ten years worth of fundraising for Alzheimers Marlborough’s purpose-built dementia facility, the first of its kind in New Zealand.
Lamingtons were donated by the Elite Food Group ,the teabags donated by Bell Tea Company, the Blenheim Club gave the group a discount for hosting the event, Peter Wedde did a big favour for his old stomping ground....the list goes on.
Then there were the husbands of the “Alzheimers Marlborough girls” who knocked up shelves, drove vans, blew up balloons, made cups of tea.
It just goes to show, when a community bands together, amazing things can happen.
Collector Graham Brooks and antiques dealer Peter Wedde with some of the collection
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Original content Cass Alexander, the Alzheimer's Reading Room
