I ran three miles into the city centre to help Scope with a big delivery that they needed to unload into their storage facility. I arrived at 9 and found that they really weren’t exaggerating, as there was a great big HGV sitting out the back, fully laden with donations. The driver said that it had been filled floor to ceiling at Barking and during the journey the bags had compacted and filled out into the side screens. So now the mountain of donations had turned into a very heavy jigsaw puzzle.

Donation Bag Jenga

I was given the job of jumping up to the back of the HGV to haul out and pass down the donations to the Scope drivers who were taking trolleys to the storage unit and back again. It was very tricky at first because they needed the boxes off first, and they were wedged in under some of the highly placed bags. But after they were cleared, the rest was a strenuous game of Jenga, trying to find the bag that would bring all of the other bags toppling down.

Avalanche

Another helper was the driver of the HGV, who every so often would bring back the side curtain and let a few bags drop out of the side. This would then loosen up some of the bags and set us up to clear another space. However, after a while, I was warned by one of the drivers that I wouldn’t want to step out and see how much further we had to go.

Splitting Bags

One of the frustrating parts of this task was that some of the donation bags were incredibly flimsy. Many had ripped apart completely before I would even get close to freeing them, and their contents would be spilled out inside the truck. The donations we were going through were from Scope’s collections in and around London, the excess that has been collected during and after Covid lockdown that is too much for the shops and even their storage. So there were drivers arriving from many different northern areas to distribute to the shops in their areas. At the moment there are already loads of donations to be sorted through in all of the shops so most of this will be stored for a good while. We will be helping with this as we have Community Missions coming up at shops in Northfield, Erdington and Walsall.

What was very clear though, if you are donating to any charity, it that it really helps if you can use a good bag to donate in, as it will carry you donations all the way to their final destination. Also, given the less than fresh smell that came from some of the bags, be careful that you are donating pleasant things.

After an extra hour to get the job done, I took a weary jog home at midday having done a full body workout.