Practice makes...better...

In a bid to make it into the top ten on the list at the Hackney foodbank today on behalf of Mrs E and so avoid a long wait, I split today's mission into two parts - qualifying and race day. Qualifying involved jumping on my bike first thing and getting to St Luke's church at 8am - where someone had fortunately put up a makeshift list and I signed up in 6th place...result. (On a whim I also took a picture of it...of which more later).

At 11am, I knocked on Mrs E's door and had a brief chat with her daughter - she was impressed on my improvement from 71st to 43rd and now 6th on the list - I said I hoped this meant I'd be back reasonably shortly...

Upon arrival at the church, there was the usual crowd and we all waited around for the tables to be put out by the volunteers at 1130. It then transpired that the original list, which apparently had the names for positions 1 to 25 had mysteriously disappeared...as you can imagine this caused something of a stir in the crowd. I mentioned I had a photo of the list that showed the first 6 names, which the volunteer was happy to see and confirm - how they managed organising the names for positions 7-25 I wasn't going to hang around to find out...but I can't think it was pretty.

At 1150 I got called to the table - this week was meant to be voucher only week at the foodbank, but I explained that Mrs E still only had a letter and that her referrer was still waiting to receive the vouchers - it seemed she wasn't alone in this situation. The volunteer passed me the contact details again to set up receipt of the vouchers and I agreed to pass this onto to her daughter.

The box of foodbags appeared and I packed the loose items in my backpack and set off back to Mrs E's. I had another chat with Mrs E's daughter on the voucher situation and we both crossed our fingers for whatever would happen next week!