Written by Sharon Graham,

I arrived fashionably late after work when the temperature had cooled down and most of the work had been done. I was left with sorting the soups and writing the numbers clearly on the bags. As you can see from the pictures all the goodgymmers had got stuck in despite the heat and kept on smiling. Linda and I stayed late to wait for drivers, a few came and went and we left for Linda to make her way home with a very local delivery and some well earned dinner.

James was leading this whilst Linda enjoys a well earned break. Mike came along and it became a family event doing a community mission. There was a delivery from Sainsbury's and the first order is to make sure all the crates are organised and then put the stuff we can do on the shelves. We were joined by 5 of Linda's helpers, making the job go smoothly. The crates we couldn't put on shelves we loaded up and put in the storage, using a trolley so no backs were destroyed. We finished just before 12, and a job well done

40 odd client packages needed to be made, and everyone got stuck on as soon as they arrived. Linda arrived a lot earlier, mostly as she is partly running the foodbank and very keen. With some help from other helpers we got done in just under 2 hours. Just goes to show that many hands make light work

We know how to make the most of a mission session at Good Gym Redbridge. Four of us met at Valentines for the cycle commute to Frenford Food Bank but before that energetic Helene and James did Valentines Park Run while Linda and AJ volunteered to marshal. After the race we had a lovely all too brief visit from former Redbridge GG member Dharmesh who was back in town to visit family. As we had confirmation that two of the others were meeting at task and there was no sign of anyone else we then set off with our donations for a pleasant 2km cycle to Frenford where we teamed up with Mike and Ali.

A huge welcome to Ali who was on his first GG mission and soon got the hang of things and got stuck in to the job.

We arrived to find the local Scouts making a delivery and a large supermarket delivery already in situ. Seeing a job needing doing we rolled up our sleeves and got on with the unpacking. James was not impressed at finding a leaky jar of hot dog sausages as you can see from the photo 😂 and there was a slight altercation with an escapee jar of Honey but apart from that everything got packed away pretty smoothly with our usual affable team spirit. Nice one people 😁

Linda was already at the food bank when James and I arrived shortly before 9am ready for a full session. The shelves had been stocked previously by Linda and other volunteers in the days leading up to the Good Friday session. There were three other good gymers including Sharon and Herman with Tina which made the 70 or so orders easier to pick as well as some young folk on the Duke of Edinburgh award all working together. There was a good number of Easter eggs donated that were added to every order that had children in the family. Very soon the shelves were severely depleted after filling all the orders and it was time to restock with supplies that we had in the back store. We were finished in record time having done two days work ( normally ) in a much shorter time than we expected and all thanks to Linda and her excellent organisation skills, well done Linda !!