After their debut with GoodGym at the Southall parkrun to Foodbank session, Beata and Anuj returned as branded GoodGymers, sporting their new red t-shirts. They lived up to the idea of active transport and ran to the task at Ealing Soup Kitchen at Salvation Army Hall in West Ealing.

When Kash arrived a bit late, rushing from the other side of London, the rest of the team was already in positions: Beata at men's clothing and Anuj at the crowd control at the queue for the clothes.

Shami and Madhan were just wrapping up after finishing the earlier shift to prepare for the 6 pm service. Madhan smoothly handed over his kitchen duties to Kash - now she became the last piece in the takeaway tubs production line and transported the hot vegetable curry to the front door.

Kash kept carrying the cargo from the kitchen until Emma, "The Boss Lady", invented a custom task: cutting a donated cake 🍰 into 48 pieces and wrapping them! It was a BIG cake.

"You are still doing the cake?"

And half of it was icing 🧁. The clients didn't finish all the cake portions, so Mel and Emma had a try of that stuff, which sent them into an intense sugar rush 🚀

In the meantime, Beata and Anuj, whose job was at an open door, had to hide their GoodGym t-shirts under extra layers as the night got unexpectedly cold and windy. When the queue for clothes settled, Anuj moved on to labelling newly donated clothes, where he was guessing the sizes of garments with no original labels. Beata was introduced to the standard backup task that keeps the ESK team sane when the shift gets quiet: wrapping the wooden cutlery in napkins.

The Monday shift ended with putting away the clothes and folding the tables. Anuj had even his first experience with packing the Cupboard of Doom, which was not as challenging as Kash described. Maybe the cupboard was easy to deal with because the recent donations were more scarce than before?

If you have any piece of clothing, backpacks, duvets, pillows or sleeping bags to donate, and struggle to get to a charity shop before the closing time, come to the Ealing Soup Kitchen on Monday between 6:00 pm and 8:00 pm at Leeland House, 8 Leeland Rd, London W13 9HH. The ESK team welcomes donations to help get homeless people, especially the rough sleepers through the winter.