Kash and Sevan were on duty for the second shift at Ealing Soup Kitchen. Sevan arrived before 6pm and the clients were already being served by the other volunteers. He was thrown straight into action on the mens' clothing table which was running short on stock this week. He was so busy that he didn't see Kash enter the building soon after and walk past him.

While Sevan was being asked for non-existent size 36 jeans, Kash was asked to organise the food in the stock room. When she got there she found lots of snack bars. Boxes and boxes of them. Kash and another volunteer started to open the boxes and soon found that some of them were past their Best Before End date, a few by more than a couple of weeks. There was so much variety in the expiry dates that Kash suggested splitting them by their freshness, ending up with 4 buckets for Good, Expired, Long Expiry and Veeeeeery Expired.

Meanwhile, Sevan had stepped away from serving clients when some new clothes donations arrived. Donations are always welcome and if they're not suitable for the Food Bank's clients, they are passed on to local charities. In this case, the first bag contained some XL business suits and shirts, with most of the shirts needing cufflinks. It all looked like quality, tailored clothing but most ended up in the charity bag. The second bag was more promising, womens' summer clothes in sensible sizes. Sevan had to figure out the best way to fold a summer dress and soon after, the clothes were all sized up and on the table for clients to pick up.

Kash was still working on the snack bars, so Sevan joined her and her multiplying crates, each labelled with a different expiry status. There were still plenty of bars to sort through, more than the Food Bank was ever likely to give away to clients. A decision was made to find all of the Deliciously Ella bars and pass them on to the Baby Bank. Cue furious rummaging through the mostly full crates to find and separate these bars.

After 2 hours - with Kash squatting throughout - most of the bars had been organised and we had to put all of the food and clothing stock back into the cupboards of doom. The food went in first... easy. Then came the vacuum bags full of clothes. Sevan sucked the air out of them, hoping to make them all fit in the shelves. 4 people tried and all 4 failed, even when all shoving the bags at the same time.

Kash and Sevan left happy with the order they'd brought to the Food Bank's stocks, yet still a bit unfulfilled. There were still some unsorted snack bars and one bag of clothes sitting lonely, outside the designated cupboards. Something to work on during our next visit.