Lucy Hill

Bright Morning Star Prisons and Homeless Outreach help to rebuild, support and elevate the lives of the most vulnerable people on the street and at their Walk-In Centres. They provide basic and immediate physical and emotional help to the public, and provide a free counselling service.

We've been asked to help with transporting leftovers from Pret A Manger, 80-82 St John's Rd SW11 1PX to their distributor at 3 Hermes Court, Southey Road, SW9 0PF. Here's a map - it's a 6km run/ride.

If you go in and say you're collecting food for Bright Morning Star Prison and Homeless Outreach, they should give you the leftovers! There may be quite a lot so just take what you can.

🎒Please bring a bag to transport the food. You could also travel by bike so panniers could be useful

🤿Please bring a mask to wear in the shop

We need two people to sign up to transport the food - you can either run/ride together or separately. There may not be a member of Taskforce there. If there are any problems, please call Temi on ‭07535355679 or Lola on 07391499092‬.

As this is a totally new partnership, it'd be great if you could send any feedback to me (Mark) at markgilyead@goodgym.org Thanks!

I had offered to help out with the food parcel packing for the Smile Brigade on Friday morning, and was delighted to turn up and be greeted by my fellow GoodGymmer Áine, who was also putting a shift in.

The Smile Brigade deliver food packages with groceries, basic essentials and hot meals to vulnerable residents up and down the Hammersmith & Fulham borough, and our first task of the day was to bag up the groceries for the deliveries that afternoon.

Along with a team of other lovely volunteers, we made up over a hundred blue bags of produce, filled with biscuits, milk, fresh bread and rolls, yoghurts, and interestingly enough, sauerkraut. There was a lot of sauerkraut! Then Áine and her fruit and veg team put together pears of potatoes, bananas, carrots, onions, apples... And some of the lucky bags even got the biggest bits of broccoli seen!

After making up all the bags, we helped unload a few more donations (more sauerkraut), emptied onions and tidied up the recycling, before the last challenge of filling up cups with porridge oats, and finding lids to fit!

Oat last, we finished, time flew by, and the morning shift was done, and the volunteers for the afternoon deliveries had arrived to take our bags away. Hopefully putting a smile on their faces.

Frances & I had been asked to help Mr V move some furniture in his flat to make space for a new armchair that would be arriving soon. Poor old Mr V had only just been discharged from hospital having had a fall, and was feeling quite tired following all this.

We arrived, and Mr V let us in. He thought we were here to measure up and bring his new chair. We explained that we weren’t, and that we had been asked to help with moving his table and old chair to make space for the new one. Mr V, we had been told before the mission, was very particular about how things were done, and he did not want our help to make some space today.

Not quite plane sailing!

Frances tried her best, offering to help move some of the piles of his music manuscripts, or to rearrange the position of the table in the middle of the room. Mr V was quite adamant that if we were to move anything it would cause great confusion, and tanks, but no tanks to our help.

We did have a little chat, and admired Mr V’s war memorabilia - he had quite a collection of model tanks and planes! So we headed off, and hoped that when his friend visits tomorrow she has more success than us at getting his furniture moved safely.