Chairs for the help!

The GoodGymers who had come to Hanwell Methodist Church to help unload the cars for stall holders in the morning were expecting to do the earlier task in the reverse order this afternoon. When they arrived, most of the organisations promoting their cause at the Ealing Animal Fair already packed their equipment into their cars or even driven away! Fortunately, there was still work to do.

Tom and the other volunteers were halfway through folding and putting the wooden tables away. That was a fantastic workout the GoodGymers couldn't miss! A less demanding task was stacking and carrying the plastic seats into the main hall - although one could scale that exercise and make it more challenging with more chairs. The next step was arranging 88 of the seats into 11 neat rows for the Sunday service at the hall. Why the mass was taking place there rather than inside the church building? In the winter, it was much easier to heat up a smaller space than the entire church!

It looked as if there was not much left to do until we discovered the kitchen utensils that had to be loaded into a car. Speaking about the kitchen, we have been rewarded with takeaway leftovers: sweet potato fries, baked potatoes, Moroccan stew, bean chilli, vegan coleslaw and soya milk. It was a lovely gesture from Marion and the people from the kitchen to offer us food to go.

On the way back, we noticed a man with Henry the Hoover. He (the man, not Henry) had to move fifty-odd folded tables across to hoover the church floor underneath. After we gave him a hand - or eight hands - we felt better about deserving our free dinner! Marion was very thankful for our work today, even if we felt that we wanted to have more things to lift. Four more volunteers at the fair made a big difference and allowed the event to be set up and wrapped up much faster!