🎶 🎄 Christmas Time, No Mistletoe and Plenty of Wine! 🎄🎶

Wow! What an amazing event we attended today.

We'd had short notice about a lunch being served for about 120 older members of the community and the organisers were hoping that GoodGym could provide some additional volunteers to help with the set up, serve drinks and meals, and tidy up afterwards.

I was leading from Task Force but unfortunately couldn't get out of work for the start of the task. But Kamal kindly agreed to liaise with Vera (the organiser) and the other GoodGymers, so that they were all able to make their way to Futures House in time to start setting up the hall. I was really greatful that he was happy to deputise for me in my absence.

By the time I arrived the GoodGym Team had got the room set up beautifully with festive table settings, crackers and all. We even had a guest appearance by Bakari, who has helped out on a couple of GoodGym tasks in the summer but who we have yet to persuade to sign up and become an official GoodGym member. And it was nice to see Fredy and Abdulkarim too who I haven't seen for a while. Of course Musa and Mohammad were there too and working hard as usual. I was impressed to see the team serving drinks and dishing up soup to the assembled crowd. Although I think some of the GoodGymers were a little surprised to see that, although senior citizens, some of the guests were pretty partial to a glass or two of various beverages, and white wine spritzers seemed to be going down a storm. I was also amused to see the number of people who were very excited to be offered a snowball. I seemed to be given mixology duties and was soon mixing up the Advocaat and lemonade concoction, as well as G&Ts, whisky macs and the odd vodka orange and soda. And of course there was a vast array of soft drinks too.

Once the soup dishes were cleared we were then kept busy serving up the main courses and dishes of vegetables to the folk. It was good to be able to chat with the guests while we were serving, but chat was kept to a minimum in order for us to get people's food to them still piping hot.

And before we knew it it was time to start clearing tables and get the puddings out to people - stopping only to take a few group photos with Vera and one or two of the other volunteers from Future's House. The guys then tucked into a well deserved meal themselves, before doing the final table clearance and later clearing up the room.

Yasin kindly helped to box up some of the leftover vegetables which GIll would be taking with her to the FoodCycle final meal of the year later that afternoon so that it would not go to waste. Special congratulations to Yasin too for qualifying for his Black Tee-shirt today. 50 tasks - go you Yasin!!!