Each Monday morning, GoodGym helps the South Ealing Food Cupboard volunteers prepare to give away food to the community. Supermarkets and other organisations donate surplus items to prevent waste. A lot of heavy lifting and speedy organisation is needed to get a van-load of food ready to share!

This morning’s haul was a slightly odd selection: white chocolate Easter bunnies, jelly play kits, and a mountain of Cornish pasties. Rebecca and Iram channelled their inner Tetris masters to squeeze the pasties into every available fridge space. Honestly, there were probably more pasties in the room than in the whole of Cornwall! Meanwhile, Jamie did a fabulous job flattening the humongous pile of cardboard, and Martin took on the sun-soaked task of unloading crates from the van and hauling them over to the church.

It was Rebecca’s first GoodGym session and Jamie’s second — lovely to welcome them both! They took to it like ducks to water!

The Hanwell Carnival is taking a break this year and not wanting to disappoint the children of Hanwell, the organisers planned a fun-draising event instead. GoodGymers joined the local volunteers to get The Viaduct pub ready for the big day tomorrow.

In the pub garden, the first thing to do was make space by moving the pub's garden furniture, putting picnic benches on the lawn. Then, it was time for gazebo building.

The gazebos were put in the gaps left around the tables and chairs. The first one involved a lot of trial and error as many of the volunteers had erected them before, but no one definitively knew all of the steps needed. Eventually, it was up and it needed to be secured to some trees and pegged down to stop it blowing away or being stolen.

"I saw someone walking down the street with a giant tent on their back" - Harvey

Once the gazebo was tethered down (involving some YouTube learning for Iram, Chris, Harvey and Sevan), it was onto the next 4, which went up pretty easily now they had the know how. There were a few extra levels of difficulty to master, like working around a raised bed where the tent leg needed to be. Chris wielded Thor's hammer to knock the chunky tent pegs in, at one point seemingly breaking them through concrete 🤯🔨💪.

Iram and Roberta were asked to help to decorating the garden and car park, putting up colourful netting to protect the princess who'll be coming tomorrow from the eager children. There were also colourful flag poles to display in the car park which looked brilliant once they were cable tied into place.

The team were able to build all of the gazebos and place many of decorations too. The fundraising event is set up for success with the regular volunteers ready to put the final touches in place tomorrow, like face painting and some traditional fairground games. We hope they have a great day!

Monday mornings in Ealing mean South Ealing Food Cupboard, where food that supermarkets have overstocked on is given away to the public, avoiding it being wasted. For some people, it's the most fun that they have with GoodGym, turning carrot chaos into tomato tranquility.

Today was no different, with crates full of oranges and tangerines, fresh turkey and the now common sight of Hello Fresh meal kits that'd been torn open, mixing all of the ingredients together randomly. Alan and Sevan helped some of the regulars haul the second delivery inside, where Iram and Martin were helping to unpack and organise everything in the 2 small rooms that are the Food Cupboard. Eventually everyone moved onto sorting donations and stacking shelves and fridges.

Bananas are ever present too and some of today's delivery had seen better days. Iram took on the task of sorting through the crates, finding the ones that were almost or already turned to mush and disposing of them. There were still a lot of bananas, so everyone grabbed a bunch to take home and there was a tempting stack of biscuit boxes near the door too 😋.