Ijo joined the GoodGym gang from the morning shift at 1 pm and stayed in the kitchen area alongside Jacquie. She had been on serving duty and then jumped straight to washing the dishes. The ESK-savvy Jacquie didn't need to be told even once what to do next, she mastered the smooth flow from one important task to the next. While the other volunteers were still chatting and finishing off their lunch, Jacquie was spotting the tables that needed tidying up and wiping them right away.

Kash was operating in the other rooms: first on clothes, then the food parcel distribution. The regular volunteer Arul had let Kash know that at 14:45 they were going to take the chicken and frozen pizzas out of the freezer and add them to the shopping bags for the clients. Arul took the role on the frontline, collecting clients' tickets (which some of them had misplaced), and Kash handed out the cooking and non-cooking grocery bags.

Once the food parcels were finished, it was time for the raffle with unique prizes: the Vanish detergent powder!

This Friday's Ealing Soup Kitchen morning session was Jacquie's first time as a chef alongside Angela. They had been frying chicken and veggie sausages, and later in the day, when the volunteers got to try lunch, the sausage turned out to be perfectly prepared! Well done Jacquie! You may end up hired as Angela's new chef!

In the meantime, Kash, who came to ESK incognito with her work colleagues, has been sorting clothes for display with regular volunteers: Doreen, Layla and Javier. Doreen had declared she was very bad with names but remembered Kash's very well when she had to call her to fold some menswear items. Meanwhile, Javier revealed his strategy to never forget names: all the ladies were Marias - apart from Doreen who was Auntie.

Shortly before service started, Kash was called to the kitchen duty to help with packing surplus onions for freezing and preparing gravy. Sausages have been all fried by that time and awaited the 1 pm lunch start in the cosy interior of the oven.

Schools started and everyone’s back to their routine. Thankfully part of our routine was making an impact in the community. Volunteers packaged loads of grocery bags for families, including distributing mammoth bags of rice! Our snack bags were jam packed full of fresh apple slices to help with the autumn feeling that’s fallen on London. Clothes were sorted and a delicious pasta and meatball dish was cooked for the hot takeaway service. More and more people joined as the night went on and this was another successful team effort by all volunteers!

Steph Ducat and Emmanuella went on a sunny afternoon to the Monday Ealing Soup Kitchen and release the first Good gym volunteers Naomi and Alaa who were on the 4 to 6pm shift. Alaa got stuck in the kitchen and stayed longer to help with the cooking as it was super busy. Steph and Emmanuella started with labelling clothes. Then Emmanuella was on clothing section and Steph was assigned to security at the food take away queue which was a bit heated today...was that due to the sun, hungry clients or something else? Sunny so sun glasses were to hand and they were red!!Feeding hungry people all before midnight and giving them bottles of water....oups 3 rules to remember that Mr Wing mentioned for those who know about the Gremlins :-) . Avoid sunlight, do not let them in contact with water and no feeding after midnight. Of course it was not the case as none are furry and got their food at 6pm!! Once the rush hour was done, we carried on with labels...good thing we dont hate labels as we would have call ourselves the antilabelists. Tonight we were lucky to see the small bags we did from old t-shirts with the Ealing Repair Shop over 2 weeks ago.

Jacquie arrived earlier and stayed for the lunch service. Lots of fun today despite it being busy. Ijo joined and was on top of the cleaning in the kitchen. Chicken or veg stir fry in wraps with salad were served to the clients.

Nishy made a come back at the ESK and started off with doing the food parcels. Then joined Jacqui with sorting out clothes. Finished with service chicken or veg stir fry in wraps with salad. It was very busy today.