Today's first delivery to the Community Food Cupboard at St Mary's Church arrived just after 8 am, so the GoodGymers missed it. Kash and Martin showed up at 10:30 despite the feeling that the Christmas break did to people's biological clocks more damage than the Daylight Saving change to the Winter Time. Was it really 10:30? Was it even Monday? Luckily, the second van arrived just in time for the volunteers waiting for the unloading session.

Among the ready meals and pastries, there was an abundance of chicken teriyaki dishes, pies and sausage rolls to unpack from the van. There were prawns that used to be frozen but now thawed. There were seven boxes of commercial-size packs of chicken breasts - sadly, those had to go back to the van as the church didn't have facilities to safely and hygienically portion the meat into smaller parcels. There was a cardboard box labelled Houses of Parliament, which collapsed when more cartons were stacked on top of it - such an ominous sign! Finally, there were vegetables, including copious amounts of tomatoes.

It was the five crates of cherry tomatoes and baby plum tomatoes that kept Martin and Kash at the church until noon. After unpacking the van fairly quickly, the GoodGymers were recruited to split the tomato crates into smaller portions and bag them. Whether there were ten thousand tomatoes, they couldn't tell, but there were loads! Enough to have longer chats about running, swimming, cycling and plans for after Christmas Eve. Wait... New Year's Eve! Ah, those festive time lapses again!

With not many people queuing for the food distribution outside the church today, Martin and Kash were spared sorting the last two crates - two or three thousand tomatoes? The surplus was destined to be shipped further - to Salvation Army at Leeland Road - exactly where Kash was heading later today to volunteer at the Soup Kitchen!

After completing the task, the volunteers were welcome to help themselves to tomatoes and other particularly abundant foods to reduce waste. Martin headed off with other volunteers for a coffee, and Kash said she was off for dinner. Wait, dinner? Wasn't that lunchtime? Ah, those festive time lapses!

With several of the regular volunteers having already headed off for Christmas, the team at South Ealing Community Food Cupboard were extra grateful to have four GoodGymers helping out today.

The delivery van turned up on time which meant that Lena, Martin, Mohamed and Alan quickly got to work unloading and unpacking.

Lots of fresh vegetables this week and although Brussels sprouts were notably absent, there were plenty of carrots - including some of the thickest ones we'd ever seen and some of the strangest shapes. Perfect for the finishing touches to a snowman, if Santa can get the weather sorted.

A church clean-up task at St Mary's is to GoodGymers what Home Alone or Die Hard are to families watching TV - a Christmas classic! Only a brief run away from Ealing Broadway, St Mary's awaited our sweeping and decorating skills. Although we knew that GoodGym's good friend, Vicar Steve, wouldn't be at the church anymore with his indispensible words of encouragement, the new task owner, Brian, gave us an equally magical treatment.

Tonight's church clean-up and Christmas tree decoration session had a fantastic turnout of 13 GoodGymers, including three (yes, that's right!) new joiners. Makkiya, Raphael and Sudha brought us a lot of enthusiasm and good energy, and we are hoping to see them again soon at another task.

The team split into the dust busters who worked upstairs and the Christmas tree beauty specialists at the altar. If decorating the tree somehow didn't provide enough merriness for everyone, then Claire's Jingle Bells played on the piano did!

Having received praise from Brian on their work, the team headed to the Grove for more festivities to come: the Christmas crackers, buffet, quiz and Secret Santa!

Next Tuesday, we are staying close to Ealing Broadway and helping the ranger transport a pile of woodchip outside Walpole Park into the walled garden - sign up now!