I THOUGHT IT WAS A QUIET DAY...

...but on speaking to several of the volunteers afterwards, we had over 150 people through the doors, so obviously not as quiet as we were in the café today.

Thankfully, there were no yucky mushrooms to deal with today, but there were plenty of sausage rolls, donuts and other cakes etc from Greggs so lots to be bagged up, and you can see three of our volunteers in the middle of my collage.  We have to be careful to label and date whatever goes into the bags, because of allergies, so it’s an important job.

I apologise to D, on the right in the middle because it looks as if she has a funny chrome twirly thingy poking out of her head - it was actually the special gadget for spraying plates over the sink - but I obviously didn’t position the ladies that well and must take more care next time!

There was plenty going on in the room where all the goods are stored for the Bags of Hope and at the moment, there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of potatoes - although we are told that will come because of all the rain and the failure of the potato crop.

We got rid of lots of bananas, but you can see there are still a large amount left - I don’t think many people make banana bread now!  

I should have counted the swedes - there were lots of those left too and one lady was telling me how she microwaves hers, but they need to be quite small, not like the “gert great big ones” that were left over.

Actually, two of the men, who shall be nameless, were cheeky about Mr. HCB;  as they were putting away the sachets of dog and cat food, they said that if I took some and gave it to him on a plate, and as it was meaty chunks in gravy, he probably wouldn’t notice the difference.  Actually, thinking about it now, that was being rude about my cooking, so I will be speaking to those two cheeky fellas on Sunday!

As there were a couple of ladies in the Knit & Natter corner, I thought I should take a couple of shots of them.  The one on the right is knitting a little hat and the lady on the left is stitching up a hat, made by the lady on the right!  It looked rather complicated watching her stitching but I must find out how she makes that beautiful flat seam.  

All in all a good morning, and I was pleased that Mr. HCB sent me a message at about 11.30 to say that he had planted all the various plants we bought yesterday and was having a break.  It started raining at about 1 o’clock so good timing.  It’s stopped raining now, but three hours of gentle rain should do them all good.

I did see one of our ladies, complete with shopping trolley, across the road to the bus stop - there was a bus waiting there, so I went on ahead, whilst she brought up the rear - and asked the driver if he could please wait, which he did.  I even managed to slip a little heart into his hand to bless and thank him and he beamed - it doesn’t take much!