There was already a big queue of people outside South Ealing Community Food Cupboard at 10:30am, 2 and a half hours before the doors opened to the public. Going inside, Sevan found that one of the regular clients had made banana bread, which was being shared around the volunteers, including Martin, Eliz and Sevan. The banana bread was a vision of what was to come.

When the delivery van arrived, Sevan was in the sun, carting crates of food to the church building and handing them over to Martin, who'd find the right spot to place them to be unpacked later. Eliz was busy organising the food donations, especially trying to stack the fridges in a sensible way to make everything fit and still have the food be easily accessible.

The shelves and fridges were stacked speedily and ready for service by 11:30. There were big deliveries of bananas, bread and mushrooms for the clients to help themselves to and banana bread is probably on the menu again for the volunteers next week 😋.

In the run up to Eid, Care 4 Calais had received a lot of requests for abayas and had been given a huge number of them as donations by a mosque. Today's task for GoodGym Ealing was to bag up the requests, ready to be delivered in the evening.

Michelle returned for her second task with Care 4 Calais in a week and was generous enough to bring some clothes donations, while Eliz was helping there for the first time and had managed to change into some clothes that weren't caked in clay after the morning task at Grove Farm.

At the start of the session, Michelle and Sevan learned that abayas were sized by height, generally from 50 to 60, which matched the wearer. Helpfully, the boxes were laid out sorted by size and had been filtered by a Muslim woman who knew what she was doing. Each pack was to contain 3 abayas, with at least one being black and 3 headscarves, with 1 black, 1 patterned and 1 new to keep things fair for the recipients. The team started with the shortest requests, the size 50s, and worked upwards in height. Everyone found that the work was quite relaxing as every request was similar, so they got into a good rhythm.

The first abayas were quite conservative. Then they found some more modern prints and soon after Eliz raised a concern. Was an abaya with a floral print actually a nightie? It might be. Tamzin took a look and it was, so Eliz was rightie. So much for the clothes being pre-filtered. Other non-conforming "abayas" were found, which were pyjamas, jumpsuits or summer dresses 👗. They all went into a rejects box to be used for other purposes as they were still useful donations.

Time was tight and the packs needed to be completed by 5pm, so everyone stayed a bit longer, working with Tamzin and a new Care 4 Calais volunteer to finish the last requests. As the GoodGymers wrapped up, the completed packs were piled high all around the first floor, ready for the driver who'd be arriving soon. Great work team! 🙌🎉👏