A very lucky thirteen took off through Penge to help sort through food donations at Living Well.

With it being Valentine's eve, this was our last chance to run ourselves towards the Love GoodGym badge on Strava. A few have already done so, having run one hour in a session between the 1st and 14th of February, great work! There has been some super running going on, with Molly covering lots of miles, it turns out she has a half-marathon at the weekend, good luck Molly! Also on the agenda for tonight's pre-run briefing was Ian's first mission. It sounds like it was a less-than-straightforward mission to start off with, but this doesn't seem to have put him off! Missions can be anything from changing a light bulb to moving furniture, but always involve helping someone when they are finding the task difficult and also spending a bit of time chatting and helping them feel less isolated. Well done Ian.

Tonight we welcomed first-timer Kate with open arms, hopefully making her feel at home!

We had a flipping good time!

As it's half-term, we were visiting one of our favourite tasks, at Living Well. We can only visit here during school holidays, when the regular Tuesday night Scout group take a break. Since our visit at the beginning of the year, the container had been sorted a little more, but still needed our attention to make things more accessible. Rowena was telling us that many of the regular volunteers are daunted by the thought of having to find anything in the container, knowing that it might involve a fair bit of lifting, shifting and searching. Our job, then, was to pull out the crates, take them to the church to be sorted and organised and to return them to the container, where they would be stacked in order.

Having such crate fun we could barely container ourselves!

Forming three teams, we had Ian and Conroy (with input from others) keeping track of activity in the container, passing crates out then, as the space became more manageable, grouping foods together, so they can be reached easily by volunteers. Inside the building, the food bank store room was being cleaned and reordered by Kiri, Hannah and Molly, while the rest of the group shuttled to and fro, carrying heavy crates and sorting them, ready to return to the newly stacked container.

Bean me up Scotty!

Thank you Kiri for that one!

During the task, a few people mentioned feeling peckish and, with it being Shrove Tuesday, I decided to do a little survey into what people like on their pancakes (n.b. some of these are what people prefer and some are what they were having for dinner).

• Cath - spinach, beetroot and feta/creamy mushroom (fancy!)
• Emma - jam and peanut butter (crunchy, of course)
• Stuart - salmon and cream cheese
• Alice - sugar and orange juice
• Louise - bacon and maple syrup
• Kate - maple syrup
• Molly - sugar and lemon juice
• Hannah - marmite and banana (controversial)
• David - avocado and poached eggs, on sweetcorn and courgette pancakes (show-off)
• Conroy - peanut butter
• Ian - banana (with pretty much any combo, but probably not marmite)
• Kiri - nutella
• me - berries, yoghurt and maple syrup

With time ticking away the end of our task creped upon us and it was time to return everything to the container, where the crates were now easy to reach and clearly grouped. It seemed like we went from having tins, bags of pasta and boxes of tea strewn across the floor to everything being neatly packed away in about five minutes - excellent! As Rowena thanked everyone and told us about how much this work will help things to run smoothly, we were given some chocolate eggs to nibble, a sugary treat to get us through the very quick fitness session that followed (where it turned out Cath is a pro at mountain climbers!).

Thank you everyone for working so well as a team, this will make such a big difference to Rowena and her volunteers.

Next week we will be returning to Melvin Hall to get our paint on again. Sign up here and join us for a bit of roller fun.