We were greeted by Genevieve the food bank organiser who thanked everyone for their efforts throughout the year and introduced us to a troop of girl guides that helped us pick orders after being split into pairs . With Linda helped by Hubby Ed, Jenny, James and Mike (James dad ) supported by the girl guide leaders and Jayesh quietly 'going solo' packing work was soon well underway.

There were plenty of chocolates and mince pies to keep us nourished as we filled an astonishing close to 100 food orders !!

The stocks were full when we started but there were big holes on the shelves when we finished. There were lots of treats for the children of families we packed for including sweets and gifts that they could enjoy.

Thanks to Mike for writing the above.

Added by Linda

It was good to see Anit arrive to assist with the deliveries, he had also volunteered to assist with phone calls.

It was a long but satisfying session, well done everyone, here is a little song for the season. You know the tune, sing along...

🎼🎶 On the 7th day of Christmas my Food Bank sent to me,

7 Volunteers Good Gymming 6 Girl Guides Assisting 5 Mince Pies 4 Loo Rolls To A Bag 3 People Stacking 2 Callers Phoning And... A Driver In An Audi GT

NB I have no idea what he was actually driving but it fit the song.

Seasons Greetings To All 🎄

Val, James and Linda arrived by bike and after a quick lockup of the bikes James started setting up the hall while Val and Linda helped Irfan unload his car. GGRs newest member Toks introduced herself and was soon getting stuck in, sitting on the floor sorting potatoes and onions which was the job Linda and Val had now moved onto. A big welcome to Toks who then went onto to put together several food packages. Nargis and Jayesh were already hard at work preparing food packages, they are also relatively new to GGR and proving to be valuable members of the team. We then learned that there were 76 packages to be done and with some of our key members missing it was going to be a stretch. Nowhere near finished by the time the drivers turned up Task Owner Genevieve turned on the charm and recruited some of them to help prepare packages. Soon the area was packed with chaotic, amicable and enthusiastic helpers, singing along to the Christmas tunes and the job got finished in no time but not before Linda unceremoniously fell on her backside and James’ trainers got in the way of a broken jar of pasta sauce! Some of us stayed on to unpack donations and break up the cardboard boxes. Genevieve told us how great she thinks GoodGym are always turning up for the task and putting in such good effort.

We had a new member turn up and help out and a returnee along with a someone who hasn't gone to these community missions for a long time. To all, glad you could make it. The good news is we had less than 40 food packages to do, and a lot of people which meant we did most of this within 2 hours. The rest of the time, we spent restocking and unfortunately finding products that have gone out of date, which annoyingly was a lot (100 bags of self raising flour, 125 tins of tomato soup, and some vegetable soup). We found a lot of custard creams went over their best before, which next session people are going to get a lot of biscuits (a future merry Christmas to them).