I want connection, but I don’t always have the energy to organise it.
That’s the part I keep coming back to.
I live regionally. I work from home. I have three children, a business, another business, and the sort of diary that can make a simple coffee with someone feel like a military exercise.
There are days when I’d love to walk into a members’ club.
Not for networking. Not for an event. Not because I’ve dressed for it.
Just somewhere I could arrive, order tea, sit for a while and be around other people without having to host, plan or explain myself.
Somewhere between home and work.
A place that asks very little, but still gives you a sense that you’ve stepped back into the world.
This is the idea of the third place.
The phrase is often used to describe the places we spend time outside home and work. Cafés, libraries, clubs, pubs, local shops, community spaces. Places where people slowly become familiar to each other.
In cities, there are more of them.
Regionally, it can be harder.
There may be a local café, but not always one where you feel comfortable staying for an hour. There may be shops where people know your name, but they aren’t quite places to sit. There may be clubs, but not always ones that feel open to the kind of quiet, everyday membership I imagine.
And perhaps that’s why I notice these places so much.
The café where someone remembers your order.
The local shop where a five-minute errand turns into a conversation.
The cellar door, library or community space where you’re not hurried along.
They don’t replace friendship.
But they lower the effort required to feel connected.
Working from home changed more than where I worked
Working from home gave me freedom.
It also removed many of the small interactions I used to take for granted.
The quick conversation in a hallway.
The person who asks how your weekend was.
The meeting that runs over because someone has made tea.
None of these things sound important until they disappear.
At home, the day can become efficient very quickly. You move from task to task. You answer emails, pack orders, write, plan, clean something, put another load of washing on.
No one interrupts unless they need something.
That kind of quiet is useful.
Too much of it can feel strangely flattening.
Returning to face-to-face sales surprised me
When I started going back out to sell my teas in person, I expected it to feel tiring.
Some of it is.
Driving, carrying samples, walking into places unannounced and asking someone to try something you made yourself takes a certain amount of nerve.
But I’ve also found it liberating.
I speak to people.
I hear what’s happening in their businesses.
I stand in cafés, hotels, clubs and shops and see how people actually move through them.
There’s a looseness to those conversations that you don’t get through email. Someone asks a question you weren’t expecting. You end up talking about the Barossa, breakfast, their customers, their mother, the way they take their tea.
Then you get back in the car and realise you feel more awake than you did before.
It has reminded me that connection doesn’t always need to be deep or carefully arranged.
Sometimes it’s enough to be seen.
The places that make this easier matter
A good third place gives people a way to be around others without the pressure of being fully social.
You can sit alone without feeling isolated.
You can talk without having made a plan.
You can become familiar to the people around you simply by returning.
That kind of place is especially valuable for people who work from home, live alone, have young children, care for others or live outside large cities.
The people who want connection most are not always the people with the most energy to organise it.
That’s why these places matter.
They make connection easier to step into.
Tea belongs here naturally
Tea gives the moment some shape.
You order it. You wait for it to brew. You pour a cup and stay long enough to finish it.
It doesn’t ask for much.
It can sit beside work, conversation or silence.
It can make a café table feel like a pause rather than somewhere you’ve briefly stopped.
The tea is not the reason the place matters.
But it helps you remain there.
Perhaps belonging starts with returning
I still like the idea of a members’ club.
Somewhere beautiful but unpretentious. Somewhere I could work for part of the morning, order something good and see the same people often enough that eventually we’d know each other.
But perhaps the third place doesn’t have to be formal.
It might be the café where the staff begin making your tea when they see you arrive.
The local shop where there is always time for a conversation.
The library table you return to each week.
The business calls that have slowly become friendships.
Or the places you find when you leave the house, carry your work into the world and let yourself be interrupted for a while.
Sometimes connection is not something we need to organise.
Sometimes we just need somewhere to go.