We have missed our AJ at Frenford Food Bank while she has been off marshaling at the Paris Olympics. Our "bits and bobs" shelf had got into much disarray in her absence. Always relishing the chance to create order from disorder she got to work making a big difference in very little time. Welcome back AJ!

Meanwhile Ed got on with sorting and stacking the recent big donation from the local scouts and Linda sorted through a big black bag containing an anonymous donation most of which was years past the BBF date and had to be thrown out. We all know BBF doesn't always mean its gone bad but chocolate from 2020 and milk powder 7 years past its date is really not on 🙄

Restricted funds and storage issues has meant biscuits are no longer on our list and the shelves had to be cleared and cleaned off. Shifting the packets led to much "intellectual" discussion about, best biscuits, boring biscuits, dunking biscuits, the infiltration if the American Orio biscuit and when is a biscuit not a biscuit? To be fair we were in the company of a very helpful 13 year old volunteer so conversation had to be kept light. 😁

Ed and Linda brought the tools out to Bernards Close, James arrived soon after and we all got on with clearing the area of weeds and other debris. Then we cut back the rosemary and lavender so it was not encroaching on the pavement and the smell of fragrant herbs was hanging in the area for a good hour or more afterwards. The last job was putting a bit of leftover mulch around the few remaining plants and we were done.

Ed was not keen on the post task run idea and was happy to put the tools away so Linda and James set off with every intention of having a good run but it turned out to be more of a chatty walk/jog (6km +) having sad that we did manage a couple of hill repeats on the local notoriously steep hill.

Well, I was challenged to use the term Tea Bagging in the title - consider it done.

Its always worth putting out a call for help with the midweek shelf filling at Frenford Food Bank as you never know who might have a random day off. Joining regulars Ed and Linda were todays "randoms" Kathryn and Sharon, very helpful they were too. We soon got all the supermarket order and Scouts donations out on the shelves. There was even time to spare to do the little odd jobs of relabeling shelves and decanting big boxes of teabags into smaller portions. All rubbish quickly cleared and spare crates tidied away outside and we were done.

Nice 😊

Three of us arrived at Frenford Food Bank to offload two weeks worth of Scout donations. It was good to see our Helen was available to join us today, she was a great help. Ed took charge of another helper who was the young Son of a Lady in the keep fit class.

The variation in goods that we get in these donations is considerable from a tin of biscuits from Harrods to an opened packet of Walkers Mix Ups where they'd taken their favourites out and sellotaped the bag back down 🙄 Its our job to weed out items like that which are opened and can't be used also the items way beyond their best date e.g. rice pudding from 2015. There are some of us prepared to take stuff that is a little bit past its best date home and replace it with fresh next time we come but 2015 was a bit much even for us 😳 The few oddities we get are far outweighed by the rest of the donations most of which is clearly bought new to give to the foodbank. With two full trolley losds sorted the shelves were considerably fuller than when we started.

Now if I could have just remembered to have taken photos it would have been a job well done🤦‍♀️ So here are some old ones which pretty much demonstrate what we did 😆

We arrived at Frenford Foodbank to find two trolley loads of donations and a supermarket delivery. AJ started by sorting out shelves, moving anything incorrectly placed and tidying up, Ed and Peter sorted out the donations and Linda moved some stock that the Task owner had previously requested to be shifted.

Pretty soon those jobs were done and we all moved on to off loading the supermarket delivery. We had all done this job before and were finished in double quick time, including tidying up after ourselves. All ready for Thursdays picking and packing. Nicely done people 😁

On a very soggy Saturday 9 of us signed up to join Valentines Parkrun Volunteers.

Our Peter who has been with GGR since its first session was first to arrive and was on his post good and early with a very bent umbrella, regular volunteer (now a legend at Valentines parkrun) Ed was next along with the Mrs, shortly joined by Jenny, James and AJ. As the first timers talk started we splashed off to our respective posts.

198 runners went by in surpisingly good spirits considering the drenching they got. A lone GG Tshirt was spotted among the runners which we can only assume was Harvey-sorry we didnt get to meet you properly.

Not sure where Julia was posted but she popped up just before the end and set of to bag a table in the cafe. We were supposed to have a picnic outside but the weather had other ideas. Parkrun done Sharon (also celebrating a significant birthday this month) scurried off to fetch her home made goodies while we made our way over to the cafe.

Not sure if the cafe turned a blind eye to us brining our own food or too busy to care but we got away with it. We had a lovley selection of nibbles and of course Colin 🐛 making his usual appearance. With half the table discussing politics and football the other side more into food and other topics, a good time was had by all.

Despite no Area Activator and Central Office being unable to support us in helping to find tasks Redbridge GG still has some active members keeping calm and carrying on. Lets hope we can find a way to get more members active in the borough so we get to celebrate more birthdays.

Ed and Linda arrived at Frenford FoodBank earlier than advertised and started sorting the supermarket delivery. Pretty soon joined by AJ who got busy unpacking packages that had not been collected from three weeks ago. Ed moved on to sorting the scouts delivery when Herman (a surprise last minute decision to sign up) arrived. Herman hadn't been notified of our earlier start time but it didn't matter as we then had another supermarket delivery come in so we all got involved in sorting that one out.

Confident that everything was prepped ready for Thursdays picking and packing we went on our merry way... forgetting to take photos...again 🙈 so enjoy these old ones 😁