The island's preschool had been meeting in one half of the council hall for six years, which meant the children moved out whenever there was a funeral and the hall smelled of paint every time it was redecorated.
The new building has four rooms, a covered yard, a water tank, two washrooms sized for small children, and a wall along the road side that took longer to agree than it did to build. It holds sixty two children in two sessions.
It took eleven months rather than the seven the council announced, and the reason is worth recording: the roofing sheets waited nine weeks for a boat, and then the wall was moved back a metre after two families pointed out that the original line ran over a footpath everybody had used for thirty years. They were right.
What it changed, apart from the obvious: the hall is free again, which is why bookings for weddings and funerals no longer collide with the school term.
