It was a welcome (and long overdue) return to the Crisis at Christmas Warehouse near Canning Town this evening for Hilary, Graham, Adam, Nick, and good to see Peter who'd crossed the border from Redbridge, and our first group task indoors for a few weeks - definitely no sunblock required.

Our host Chris, who heads up the Retail activities at the Crisis warehouse, met us at the entrance (having arrived only a few minutes earlier as he'd been on shop delivery duty in Wembley and Walthamstow during the afternoon) and clearly had a long list prepared of what he wanted us to get done in the hour.

First task was to unload his van of boxes and bags (the latter sorted into cages by shop location and content description). Once that was done, we split into smaller gangs to get on with breaking up boxes, shifting empty cardboard boxes ready for packing, and stacking boxes ready for distribution. We then split again into emptying various pallets of items to clear space to create storage/space in the warehouse, and doing a count of items in bags (guesstimates permitted) - at which point we were given a 3 minute hydration break, sponsored by some previously donated cans of drink, before being marshalled around to the bagging area ready for the final quarter.

Chris would usually need to do a stock take of the number of items/bags each month, but this had been done by some other volunteers last week, albeit they hadn't quite completed the task and/or their tarpaulin laying skills hadn't been completely successful. Working in the Elephant and Castle and Camberwell shop cages it was a case of removing numerous sacks of clothes as a chain gang to get full access to the stack of winter clothing bags in each, and doing a (rough) count of the number of bags in that cage, before then covering with a tarpaulin, as these items don't get distributed to the Crisis high street shops until autumn is on its way.

With that task complete and the totals marked and taped to the now firmly secured tarpaulins, we had a final debrief/story telling session (mind your feet, otherwise they'll be all yellow...) from Chris, and arranged a return visit with him for August.

"I can honestly say you've been the best volunteers I've had today"...

An almost perfect evening for a pleasant 3k social run and return visit to the communal gardens at Wild Green E13, where this week we were tasked with weeding the "mural bed" (aka disturbing yet again a lot of snails), and after being given a crash course in weed identification ("take out all the ones with the big rabbity ear style leaves"), and armed with an impressive collection of trowels, and a wheelbarrow to use as the collector of said ears and anything else that could be composted, Hilary, Graham, Brad and Nick got to work.

We had an audience, as the evening sunshine had brought out the crowds to enjoy the park and gardens, and we received quite a few compliments from the benches on the great work we were doing to keep the garden neat and tidy - our hosts were equally delighted with our efforts, and once we'd got the weeding done, it was time to water the vegetable patch in advance of the forecast hot spell later this week - Graham discovered the Edvard Munch "Scream" watering can was surprisingly accurate...After an equally pleasant run back, we decided Hilary's birthday of last week needed celebrating, and conveniently our run had finished right outside the pub...always great when a plan comes together.

We'll be back again to help out at the gardens on 4th August - more watering, weeding, composting and whatever other tasks that Fleur and her friendly colleagues need doing to keep this particular community garden in excellent condition.