This morning, as I cycled to work, the mist rising from the Thames became my only photo of the day. It wasn’t until I got there that I realised today was a bank holiday. But it didn’t matter. Two volunteers and I agreed weeks ago to be there this morning to hand out food to asylum seekers.
 
When someone applies for asylum (i.e. to be officially recognised as a refugee) they are housed somewhere in the UK where not-too-expensive accommodation is available – which tends, unsurprisingly, to be in places with few jobs and certainly not Oxford – and are also given £36.95 a week to buy food, clothing and toiletries.
 
If an asylum seeker has been ‘dispersed’ to, say, Liverpool or Glasgow or Hull but wants to live with a family member or friend who has ended up in Oxford (probably because after they got refugee status, so were allowed to work, they got a job here) the asylum seeker gives up their allocated accommodation, comes and sleeps on a floor and is then not entitled to any money. (If you can see the logic of that please explain to me.)
 
So for those getting £36.95 a week or nothing, the charity I work for provides a weekly bag of food. It comes from kind donations from local people and from the Oxford Food Bank, for which volunteers collect supermarket food close to its sell-by date which would  otherwise end up in a skip.
 
This morning was the one time the office will be open for food collection this week. Soon after the two volunteers and I arrived, the Food Bank van and its cheerful volunteers (they are always cheerful) showed up, laden with supermarkets’ Christmas over-stocks. They had a good haul: potatoes, onions, broccoli, apples, bananas, eggs, coriander and bread. And sprouts, of course, but none of the luxury items we got last year when the newly-opened Oxford Waitrose was still working out how much tapenade and artichokes in olive oil it could sell.
 
So some hungry people got food and I got some exercise and a blip.




Black and white in colour 117