Keen to help at a time of national crisis, but frustrated at having received no calls for help yet through the NHS Responder scheme – although we both had our applications accepted several weeks ago, Daisy (Janie) took matters into her own hands. A friend recommended that she speak with FoodCycle.
Under normal circumstances, FoodCycle’s thing is to use surplus food to reduce waste and to bring people together around healthy meals. It is a superb, award-winning charitable idea.
But the current circumstances are not normal; the social gathering element of the idea has needed to be parked at this stage of the Covid pandemic.
Thus the charity has had to re-orient itself towards distributing food to the vulnerable and needy, which profoundly changes the supply, production and distribution aspects of the initiative.
In this maelstrom, volunteers like me and Daisy become surprisingly useful. We possess cars, smart phones and a willingness to be guinea pigs as delivery folk for new/temporary food distribution projects.
Daisy signed up and did a delivery round for our most local, East Acton, project last weekend. I then signed up this last week.
FoodCycle were clearly keen to use us. Could we help out this weekend with a new project in Clapham/Battersea to distribute frozen meals generously donated by COOK Clapham? 10 deliveries for this one rather than last week’s five. Of course we could, but we all agreed that this larger job would be better done as a Ged & Daisy two-hander.
Three hander if we count Dumbo, the Suzuki Jimny.
Armed with a very smart Circuit for Teams app for routing, delivery instructions and confirming “jobs done”, plus a letter from FoodCycle confirming that we were doing essential work and not out for a drive on a sunny day, off we set.
Dumbo was a little fearful that he might be stopped by the police, despite his legitimate purpose. This was the first time he’d been out and about in several weeks, of course… & Dumbo does have previous in the matter of being stopped by the fuzz:
Anyway, Dumbo needn’t have worried; we saw quite a few cop cars out and about but didn’t get stopped.
We certainly knew where we were going in the matter of getting to COOK Clapham, as it is just across the road from 33 Abbeville Road, formerly Newton’s, where Ged & Daisy had previous:
The COOK Clapham team were lovely and handed us bag upon bag upon bag of food:
After we had loaded all eight bags into the back of Dumbo (but mercifully before we set off), my lightening computational mind worked out that we must have the food for the other pair who were doing the distribution as well as the supplies for our own round.
The others turned up at more or less the same moment as we were getting out of the car to check the details with the COOK team, so that matter was easily put right.
Doing this type of delivery round is a strange mixture of easy and difficult. Easy to get to the place where the sat. nav. tells you to stop (especially for me around Clapham/Battersea where I know the area well), but sometimes difficult to get the meals to the actual door for the actual person/people who need them.
The most comedic example of the difficulties was on one Battersea estate, where the recipient had asked us to phone on arrival, which I did, to which she said she’d be down in a minute or two. Janie took the goods to the front door of the large block of flats where she waited and waited. Meanwhile, I started to feel a little bit nervous of a man with a van, who had turned up next to me, who was rummaging in his van and talking on his mobile phone, but I sensed was also eying me up.
Eventually I phoned the woman again, who seemed aghast that her husband hadn’t yet found us; he’d gone down to get something from his van and collect the food.
So I asked the gentleman with the phone if he was collecting food for the guest in question, to which he answered “yes”. It hadn’t occurred to him that we might be the people delivering the food. The sharpest knives in the draw must have all been used to produce those yummy-looking COOK meals.
Daisy and I resisted the temptation to try one of the meals ourselves, even though COOK had generously provided more than the required number of orders. We felt honour bound to distribute the additional dishes to those who said “yes please” when we told them that we had a few extras. Ged and Daisy’s halos will remain available for all to see for quite some time.
Driving around that area was a bit of a memory lane trip for me of course, especially when our route took us past dad’s shop on St John’s Hill:
Janie wondered whether I wanted to stop and take a picture of the location as it now looks, a rock bar named Project Orange, but I assured her there would be no need to try stopping on such a busy road just for a picture:
On one occasion we did need to try and stop on a busy road, as we had one delivery to do on the Queenstown Road itself. As I indicated and slowed down to try and find a suitable & safe place to stop, a group of young cyclists took a dislike to what we were doing, to such an extent that the young woman of the pack shouted at me…
…what the hell are you doing?…
…I wanted to shout back…
…I’m delivering lunches to the needy for charity, while you lot are out having a fun bike ride on a sunny day. What the hell are YOU doing to help?…
…but I didn’t do that, I kept my wise words to myself, or rather I chose to share them solely with Daisy…and now with you, dear reader.
There’s nothing glamorous about this type of volunteering gig; it is pretty hard work. While repetition and experience might reduce the time and effort factors a little, it will remain time consuming hard work. But we both got a buzz from the gratitude we heard and saw from most of the recipients.
And we felt an enormous sense of satisfaction when we completed our round of deliveries and headed home.
Will we do it again when asked? You bet.