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 !!

Well not so much keyed up as locked out when Mike and Linda arrived at Frenford Food Bank. Although the Centre officially opens at 8:30 someone forgot to tell the key holder, to be fair we had arrived a bit early and it was all sorted by the official start time.

We were joined by our Kathryn, some Mums of the gymnatics club and the youngsters from the Duke Of Edinburgh Award Scheme. That is the great thing about Frenford, the young, old, short and tall all working to their own strengths together to get the job done. And the job was soon done with a little energy left (very little lol) for the usual shelf filling, tidying up and one of us even managed a small delivery on the way home 🙂

Mike and Linda arrived early at Frenford and got stuck into prepping for the Food Bank deliveries. In no time at all a little bit of shelf filling was done and the food trolleys organised into position ready for when Frenfords own volunteers showed up.

The rest of the session went pretty smoothly and we were all done in good time. Then there was another shelf filling session (the breakfast cereals had taken a bit of a pounding) and a supermarket delivery to store away.

We left tired but happy at a job well done.

All Good Gymmers turned up, on time, bright eyed and bushy tailed only to find the two task owners were running late. Irfan was gathering supplies on his way in, Gen didn't give a reason but possibly a lie in being bit de-mob happy given it was her last session. The shelves had already been filled the night before so we took time to chill and catch up on gossip.

Once we did get underway it was the usual organised chaos with Irfan's delivery being put away as we started getting on with the packing lists. The gates to the car park were stuck closed causing problems for the drivers conversely the building doors seemed to be stuck open making it a chilly job today. Someone thought they were being helpful by numbering a spare trolley (you know who you are😂) but it was left out of sequence and the subsequent confusion meant a package was missed.

As ever these issues were all taken in our stride with everyone working as a team to resolve them and it all got done in time for lunch.