What a gorgeous Bank Holiday! 🌞 While most of Ealing was enjoying the sun this Good Friday, getting paths and benches in all the parks busy, two GoodGymers decided to descend to the underground instead. Jennifer and Kash took advantage of their day off work to join the first shift at Ealing Soup Kitchen at the Crypt of St John's Church. Because it was Good Friday, the ESK coordinator Angela prepared something special for the clients! 🫶

🌟 Highlights:

• A special day means a special programme! There was bingo with prizes, table curling and more entertainment. We enjoyed poems performed by the clients, signing, and even dancing! The gospel choir music was lively and heartwarming 🎵
• Jennifer and Kash first joined the busy tea station along with volunteers Maureen and Sangeeta 🫖
• Sangeeta prepared a bunch of impressive vegan cupcakes with not-so-vegan icing and chocolate eggs on top 🥚 They looked absolutely professional! 😋
• Jennifer's and Kash's knowledge of languages proved to be very useful to the clients who struggled with English or just fancied a chat in another lingo
• There was a milk shortage just before dinner! Uh oh! During tea & coffee service we discovered that a big bottle of milk in the fridge was spoiled. Kash ran to the shop across the road and bought a few more pints. Other volunteers didn't expect GoodGym to be so fast 🏃‍♀️ Arul and Angela were excited about having so much extra milk and decided to go big on serving lots of hot chocolate to the clients!
• During the dinner, Jennifer and Kash acted as servers, taking two tables each. It was not an easy job for a beginner, especially if you keep forgetting to ask whether a client wants some gravy! 😅 Other volunteers told the newbies not to stress. Every client, whether a bit grumpy or charming and grateful, would get served eventually!

At 13:30, second-shift GoodGymers, Madhan and Gabriela, came to the rescue and took some of the responsibilities from Jennifer and Kash. The first-shift folk hung around a bit longer, then emerged from the underground to enjoy the sunshine.

Madhan and Jennifer were early arrivals at the Hobbayne Centre ahead of their big quiz night. It was great to have Jennifer back after a long absence and we hope to see her again soon. They were being briefed about the event as Kash and Sevan arrived, which was the cue to start setting up.

Madhan and Jennifer started pairing up cutlery for all of the guests while Kash and Sevan unfolded tables and puzzled over the table layout. Everyone needed space to move, so tables were slid back and forward like a puzzle until everything was in order. Once Jenni had arrived our team was complete and we came together to lay out chairs for all of the attendees, with the comfiest going to the trustees' table.

When the front of house was ready, there was nothing for us to do until the crowds arrived. It was time to relax and prepare ourselves for the evening to come. We charged our batteries while we waited as the organisers had provided us lots and lots of biscuits to keep our energies up. Maybe it was the increased sugar levels that caused a lot of excitement when the raffle prize table was laid out. We didn't care about the free pizzas or chocolates... there was a blue sloth looking realing cute slouching against the wall. This was the best prize going, everyone agreed.

Jenni had volunteered to work the front desk as people arrived, taking the entrance fee and selling raffle tickets. After this, the next real push for all of us would start half way through the quiz when dinner would be served. In the meantime Kash and Sevan caught up on some report writing while chatting to Jennifer and Madhan.

Soon after the guests had arrived, disaster struck! The main bathrooms flooded. The only other pair of cubicles were hidden back stage and Jenni, fresh from selling tickets took on the role of traffic controller, directing guests around secret areas normally reserved for GoodGymers to lounge around in at events like this.

Jennifer, Madhan, Kash and Sevan took Jenni's earlier hard work and were turning the raffle tickets into raffle ticket origami. They folded the tickets tightly so that no one could see the numbers, cheat and give that lovely blue sloth to their best friend. We started off with a little bowl for the folded tickets which was soon overflowing. Searching for something bigger we were given a decorative cake cover which we flipped over and filled with hopeful scraps of paper.

As the midpoint of the quiz came, we were all primed for action. Bowls of roasted nuts went out first, then from each table we took orders for chicken curry or the intriguingly named Vegetable Jumble. The service went smoothly and so did the clear up, with Kash and Sevan in hunter mode on the floor for empty plates and Madhan taking them into the kitchen and prepping them to be washed.

Once the paying guests had eaten, it was our turn. We were given plates piled high with vegetables, lentils, rice and chicken curry. It was a challenge to eat our way through all of the food (which didn't stop us nibbling on more biscuits later). The quiet time gave us a chance to play along with the quiz though where we found out that:

• We'd all have Jenni on our quiz team as she has a huge range of general knowledge filed away 🤓
• Jennifer had a well spent youth and can identify almost any cartoon characters
• Sevan can guess some pretty random answers

Next year we might enter ourselves as we thought we could've done pretty well as a team.

Eventually, we pried ourselves off the seats and back into service. Wiping down tables behind the scenes then getting stuck in with the washing up. By this time we'd been at the Hobbayne for over 5 hours and one by one we made our excuses before the end of the evening, heading into the night towards our beds.

Different strokes

We were back with The Artful Hub for our second layer of paint this evening. We were originally meant to be at St Anthony's School on the Farnham Rd doing an outdoor painting task however due to the lack of light, that task was postponed until the Summer.

So Eva was delighted when I asked if we could come back tonight to carry on with what we started last week. Same type of task but just different strokes!

Warm welcome to Jennifer on her first Slough task...she was here for the tourism and you can't get more touristic than Slough!

We met at Sainsbury's on the Uxbridge Rd, welcoming Jennifer followed by task brief and warm up then headed down the road to Tesco. Sounds more like a GG shopping (c)art mission doesn't it but with our original meet up point still a vaccine centre, this is how we roll these days - meeting up in different areas of Slough....But before we move on...lets give Sara a shout out for restarting her running tonight after a years gap...

On arrival, Eva had everything ready for us and asked us to give the left side of the unit a good coating of paint. It didn't take us long to unwrap the brushes from last week and get into our flow...

• We had the rolling tones - Sandy, Gauri and Kam tackling the stone wall;

• Whilst Jenni, Sara and Abdul were off with a flying art with the 'porus' green wall trying to make it white again. This wall had a mind of it of it's own! We shall break you next week wall!

The task tonight didn't take us too long at all. Always amazing to see how much of a difference a handful of helpers can make in less than one hour. Next week we will be tackling the upstairs areas of the kitchen and bathroom.

As always with Eva and Salvo, the evening finished with a biscuit and chat before saying our goodbyes and heading back to base.

Thank you for having us Artful Hub...we are already looking forward to next week.