A return to the Ping Pong Parlour

Remember that novel evening in March, Once upon a town centre..., where GoodGym supported the Big Read book festival by stickering books and sorting donations in the Nicholson Centre's Ping Pong Parlour? Well this evening's community mission was a sequel of sorts - one that you would have dismissed as completely implausible had you read it a year ago.

3 days after the Big Read festival finished, Covid-19 was declared a pandemic, and the rest, as they say, is history...

Enter the hero of this tale: Maidenhead Foodshare. The charity was set up in 2011 to provide healthy meals to people facing poverty. During the crisis they have seen a huge surge in demand, and they have had to adapt in unprecedented ways - one of which has been moving their premises to the (former) Ping Pong Parlour in order to expand their operation and to facilitate social distancing.

This spacious ex-retail unit is now unrecognisable. A one-way queuing system is in place, leading to a line of tables with perspex screens, which are manned by volunteers wearing PPE. Behind this is a large store room with tidy aisles of donated food such as cereal, tinned meals, biscuits and long life milk.

The charity have a pool of volunteers helping with the mega operation of sorting donations and packing food parcels, but they need more help with tasks like cleaning, so here we welcome back those GoodGym characters from our earlier story!

Mop my run

Our task for this evening was to give the floor a good clean. Anna and Jess led the way with the brooms, and Ana, Amy, Christelle, Meggie and Vanessa followed with mops and diluted bleach. Check out Christelle's impressive figure of 8 technique in the photos!

It was a good upper body workout, especially as we were moving at speed to cover as much ground as possible before the Nicholson Centre closed for the night.

It was great to meet Debbie Gee and Lester Tanner, who do incredible work to run this impressive foodbank. It was also brilliant to meet volunteer Ofer, who already has her GoodGym t-shirt and plans to join us on a community mission soon.

After the task 6 of us had a lovely run, chatting and exploring the footpath along the Jubilee river from Ray Mill Island to the Bath Road.

We have lots of spaces on upcoming community missions with Braywick Nature Centre (this Friday lunchtime), Maidenhead Community Allotment, The Baby Bank and St Edmund Campion Primary (not listed yet but fingers crossed this will be next Wednesday evening). We also have some missions coming up in Windsor: helping Windsor Foodbank and the Windsor Homeless Project. The latest listings are always here on our 'happenings' page. See you soon!