Bread winner

This young man is one of the volunteers who do a daily round to pick up surplus/rejected food items from local shops and suppliers and bring them back to the cafe for sorting and using, if suitable.(It was mainly loaves and biscuits today.) In fact his carer, left, does most of the work because in reality he'll never be  a breadwinner. A catastrophic road accident wrecked his life a while ago,  rendering him too disabled for mainstream employment. Thanks to the NHS he's regained a measure of independence and enjoys his weekly visit to the cafe where he entertains us with terrible jokes and scores a free meal.

Later in the day a very young customer came in, probably not yet a teenager, who should have been at school had he not been excluded for reasons unknown to us. He's formed quite a bond with one of the other cafe volunteers while she has been working with the local youth group on the community gardening project.  He's clearly as smart as a whip and could  run rings round most teachers but he was full of intelligent  questions about the cafe and wondered how old he would have to be to work there.

Yesterday afternoon I attended a meeting in the  heritage centre, one of a mostly grey-haired crew who have been trying to establish another community project, a place to gather and display  local history, as well as to preserve and share people's memories, mementos and photographs. Like all such things it depends on freely-given time and energy to get going and keep running.

With so much to be depressed and concerned about during these dark days things like this remind me that, at a grassroots level, mutual aid and community collaboration can make a difference to people's lives if only in small ways - tiny stitches that may repair a little of the damage done by disturbing inter/national events. 

(The catalogue of abusive incidents that has followed Trump's victory is horrendous  while the VP elect has already announced that Obama's legislation regarding birth control and transgender toilet facilities will be reversed.)