Not sure how or why but we went from 5 GoodGym volunteers for the evening session at Frenford Foodbank to 1 😳. A little shout out for help revealed a couple of members (retired and but not keen on going out at night) were available during the day so an extra daytime session was born. Along with them and another non-member we managed to get most of the supermarket delivery shelved up and 20 packages parceled ahead of time. This eased up the pressure on the evening session. The task owner has thanks us for our efforts. Never underestimate Grey Power 💪🏻.

The little problem of the supermarket cancelling Frenford FoodBank’s order didn’t stop us doing good things today.

While the task owner shot off to sort it out we off-loaded the Scouts donations, un-bagged a couple of non-collections, tidied up the odds and ends shelf and re-stacked biscuit mountain before it avalanched.

We couldn’t help but dance along to catchy music coming from the dance studio definitely ‘doing good while keeping fit’ going on at this session.

Whilst waiting for the task owner to report back we had a cheeky little break with a chatty catch-up, cup of tea and usual stale biscuit in honour of our AJ’s Birthday today.

Sadly it wasn't possible to get the supermarket delivery in before the end of the session but we still got quite a bit done.

What a lovely productive session that was.😊 Often there are just two of us on this regular task but luckily the stars were aligned and 5 of us were available for this midweek session. Not only did we get three cage loads of donations off loaded there was time to spare for extra shelf organising and filling plus a little stock taking in readiness for the next packing session. There was a slight "snackident" with some chocolates of an uncertain but as it turned out quite edible age and a little incident with some leaky Bovril 😬 but apart from that everything went very smoothly and efficiently. Well Done Everyone 🥳

We have missed our AJ at Frenford Food Bank while she has been off marshaling at the Paris Olympics. Our "bits and bobs" shelf had got into much disarray in her absence. Always relishing the chance to create order from disorder she got to work making a big difference in very little time. Welcome back AJ!

Meanwhile Ed got on with sorting and stacking the recent big donation from the local scouts and Linda sorted through a big black bag containing an anonymous donation most of which was years past the BBF date and had to be thrown out. We all know BBF doesn't always mean its gone bad but chocolate from 2020 and milk powder 7 years past its date is really not on 🙄

Restricted funds and storage issues has meant biscuits are no longer on our list and the shelves had to be cleared and cleaned off. Shifting the packets led to much "intellectual" discussion about, best biscuits, boring biscuits, dunking biscuits, the infiltration if the American Orio biscuit and when is a biscuit not a biscuit? To be fair we were in the company of a very helpful 13 year old volunteer so conversation had to be kept light. 😁

Ed and Linda brought the tools out to Bernards Close, James arrived soon after and we all got on with clearing the area of weeds and other debris. Then we cut back the rosemary and lavender so it was not encroaching on the pavement and the smell of fragrant herbs was hanging in the area for a good hour or more afterwards. The last job was putting a bit of leftover mulch around the few remaining plants and we were done.

Ed was not keen on the post task run idea and was happy to put the tools away so Linda and James set off with every intention of having a good run but it turned out to be more of a chatty walk/jog (6km +) having sad that we did manage a couple of hill repeats on the local notoriously steep hill.

Well, I was challenged to use the term Tea Bagging in the title - consider it done.

Its always worth putting out a call for help with the midweek shelf filling at Frenford Food Bank as you never know who might have a random day off. Joining regulars Ed and Linda were todays "randoms" Kathryn and Sharon, very helpful they were too. We soon got all the supermarket order and Scouts donations out on the shelves. There was even time to spare to do the little odd jobs of relabeling shelves and decanting big boxes of teabags into smaller portions. All rubbish quickly cleared and spare crates tidied away outside and we were done.

Nice 😊

Three of us arrived at Frenford Food Bank to offload two weeks worth of Scout donations. It was good to see our Helen was available to join us today, she was a great help. Ed took charge of another helper who was the young Son of a Lady in the keep fit class.

The variation in goods that we get in these donations is considerable from a tin of biscuits from Harrods to an opened packet of Walkers Mix Ups where they'd taken their favourites out and sellotaped the bag back down 🙄 Its our job to weed out items like that which are opened and can't be used also the items way beyond their best date e.g. rice pudding from 2015. There are some of us prepared to take stuff that is a little bit past its best date home and replace it with fresh next time we come but 2015 was a bit much even for us 😳 The few oddities we get are far outweighed by the rest of the donations most of which is clearly bought new to give to the foodbank. With two full trolley losds sorted the shelves were considerably fuller than when we started.

Now if I could have just remembered to have taken photos it would have been a job well done🤦‍♀️ So here are some old ones which pretty much demonstrate what we did 😆

We arrived at Frenford Foodbank to find two trolley loads of donations and a supermarket delivery. AJ started by sorting out shelves, moving anything incorrectly placed and tidying up, Ed and Peter sorted out the donations and Linda moved some stock that the Task owner had previously requested to be shifted.

Pretty soon those jobs were done and we all moved on to off loading the supermarket delivery. We had all done this job before and were finished in double quick time, including tidying up after ourselves. All ready for Thursdays picking and packing. Nicely done people 😁