Having to reschedule leave meant I missed out on the Wednesday #foodbank session.

But the boss lady mentioned the mouse droppings in the storage, so armed with cleaning kit the issue was tackled and cleaned up.

It seemed like the mice had a preference for dry pasta, somehow.... anyone know why?

Fingers crossed the humane traps will do their job soon!

So lovely to have last minute sign ups Bernadette and Marie come to help Ed and Linda at Frenford food bank today. Relatively new additions Marie and Bernadette they are already invaluable members of the team. They joined in with super shelf stacker Ed, who was already working with a Frenford volunteer, unpacking two cages of donations and several supermarket delivery crates.

That job got finished in super quick time so the dynamic duo then joined Linda in labeling up the cages for the next picking and packing session, meanwhile Ed restocked the pasta shelves from the store room. Unfortunately moving the pasta uncovered evidence of the inevitable visitor one is likely to get with this kind of stock in storage 🐭💩. That's a little job for another day, next installment to follow tomorrow.

4 goodgymmers and a friend joined forces to restock and stock-take at Frenford food bank this week.

The ggers started by offloading the donations and abandoned collections whilst the friend date checked the biscuits. Sadly there were quite a few that were out of date and we now have procedures in place to make sure they are properly rotated.

Attention was then turned to bringing stock in from the store room while one of us had a count up so the task owner knows how much they need to buy in for the next session.

It was a nice relaxed session with everyone going about their tasks generally chitchatting as they went.

Forgot to take photos so here are some previous ones of all those involved.

smorgasbord /ˈsmɔːɡəsbɔːd/ noun a range of open sandwiches and delicacies served as hors d'oeuvres or a buffet. a wide range of something; a variety. "the album is a smorgasbord of different musical styles"

Initially perhaps not the most logical title, but it actually covers things quite well...

• a wide variety of baby clothing and accessories to be sorted
• a wide variety of GG crew coming together
• a wide variety of transport methods used, mainly involving feet & bikes & train

As always, conversation flowed while bags full of donations got checked and sorted, from health & well being to linguistics and reclaiming old school words (ask Sharon about that one 🤣)

Bags of donations empty, sorted clothing expertly packed up by Adam and it was time to make our goodbyes again - back in 6 weeks!

At first it seemed we were a little short on the ground at Frenford with just Peter, Ed and Linda on site ( we had three GGrs drop out yesterday) so we got straight on with setting up the session. Pretty soon a couple of volunteers from other groups turned up and got stuck straight in. We were then joined by Bernadette and would like to offer her a huge welcome to Good Gym Redbridge. Bernadette hit the ground running as soon as she got her coat off and provided invaluable help with picking and packing.

As usual everyone worked together playing to our various strengths and weaknesses and got the job done pretty much on time. The task owner has expressed his gratitude for all our hard work. 😊

Next Wednesday we will be restocking the shelves and off loading the usual donations.

January is usually the month of good intentions etc....

So an appointment has been made to donate blood. It couldn't quite happen in January for various reasons, but at least the appointment has been set!