Sam and Ben met up for another foodbank run to donate much needed items for MCR South-Central foodbank.

After a weekend of high winds and heavy rain, we were thankful for a relatively peaceful, albeit cold, Monday evening jog down to Hulme Asda, leaving behind a giant Santa in St Peter's Square.

Sam made the smart choice to run unladen and buy a basket load of tea/coffee and other goods for the donation point. Ben was less smart, lugging a heavy bag of tins and UHT milk from home to the drop-off...

In all, we filled the bottom of the trolley donation point, before heading back via Man Met University buildings and getting a picture with the Christmas Bee 🐝

With no new sign ups and others who couldn't make it, Ben combined a foodbank run to Hulme with a physical gardening session at Gorse Hill Green Rooms project.

Lots of tins of meats, fish, fruit, spaghetti, and beans plus oats, jam plus much more with extra plastic bags were dropped off at the donation point in Hulme Asda.

After that, it was a run to Gorse Hill to construct an archway, dig up some big ivy roots, and clear up a bit before their event on 25th October.

After a dry 2025, the rain has finally started in Manchester with plenty of puddles and sideways showers 🌧🌧🌧

Ben ran from Longsight to St Peter's Square for the meeting point then along to Asda Hulme for the foodbank drop off. Laden with a heavy bag 🎒 containing:

• tinned fruit (peaches and mandarins)
• tinned peas 🫛
• tinned mushrooms 🍄
• rice pudding
• instant coffee ☕️
• Apple juice 🍎
• UHT milk 🥛
• Strawberry 🍓 jam
• marmalade

Bit of a diversion on the way home, with a police corden - turns out this was the area of the stabbing in Manchester yesterday (BBC News - Teenager arrested after boy, 15, dies in Moss Side stabbing - BBC News https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce3y9v8e7eqo) which is a bit sad.

Hope to be at Gorse Hill next week, pending a working website.

Peter and Ben both decided to combine a foodbank run with another ivy clearing and planting session at Gorse Hill Studios. We joined Katie, Duncan, Cathy, and Rebecca.

We dug, hacked, chopped, cut, pulled, sawed, and pickaxed our way through the never-ending ivy growing around bushes and fences.

We burned some of the vegetation and piled it ever higher. We found lots of spiders 🕷 and saw the plans and prep for the pond. The cup of tea 🍵 and a kitkat also helped on a warm and sweaty evening ☀️ There was also some planting of other plants 🪴 in between the hedge trees 🌳 we had planted a few weeks ago.

Following the session, Ben took a collection of tins 🥫 milk 🥛 crackers, strawberry 🍓 and raspberry jam, rice pudding, tinned fruit and veg, and some spaghetti 🍝 hoops to a nearby drop off for Manchester South-Central foodbank.

Following a session planting hedge trees 🌳, Ben made the 2.5 mile run, admittedly on the way home, to drop off items to the foodbank collection point at ASDA in Hulme. In all there was:

• tinned sweetcorn 🌽
• tinned mushrooms 🍄
• tinned tuna 🐟
• tinned spaghetti 🍝
• tinned mandarins 🍊
• jar of jam 🍓
• UHT milk 🥛
• Apple juice 🍏
• rice pudding 🥫

Decent run and made the trolley a little bit fuller before running home 🏡

Let me begin.

Peter, completing his 20th Good Deed, and Ben raided the cupboards and the shops to take much needed items to a food bank collection point at Asda in Hulme for Manchester South-Central food bank. In all we donated:

• tinned meat 🥩
• tinned fruit and veg 🥕🍍
• rice 🍚
• rice pudding
• UHT milk 🥛
• long life juice
• tinned beans 🫘 and spaghetti 🍝
• plastic bags (always handy to re-use)
• peanut butter 🥜

The trolley was well filled once we had unloaded, and the run 🏃‍♂️ back was certainly much lighter and quicker! We had a quick stop at Parakeet Parkway on the way 🦜

We'll have another donation drive before the summer holidays in July too, so keep an eye out for that.

We came to do good, we came to do good, so get out your seat and run around... (I'll work on it)