Having collected the authorisation letter from Mrs E, I walked down to St Luke's Church where the foodbank was located and to discover that people start queueing early for the 1130 opening time...a piece of paper on the church door was a sign in sheet which then (in theory) allocated you with a number...I shouldn't have been surprised even at 1120 that I was 71st in the queue.

Cue (bad pun) a patient wait on the church wall and trying to guess how long it would take the admirable (but soon to be frazzled) volunteer team handing out the food parcels to work their way to the 71st on the list. Having never waited in a foodbank queue before, it proved a fascinating couple of hours. When the list reached number 66, I stood up hopefully. It then transpired there were 3 no.67s, 3 no.68s and quite a few more 69s...no one quite seemed to know why.

Eventually the now over harassed volunteer team called my name and I was able to explain who Mrs E was and they kindly handed over a heavy bag of food for her. The wait had been worth it and was pleasant enough (the strange shouting, occasional arguing and erratic social distancing aside), but I was glad to be walking back to Mrs E's with her items.

I left the bag at Mrs E's door and we had a quick chat about her new instructions on how to get future food parcels under a voucher scheme and what she needed to do and she thanked me for my time. It had been one of those "character building" types of morning but one that I'm glad I had the chance to experience!