ANOTHER GOOD DAY AT THE COMMUNITY FRIDGE

I didn’t go to the Community Fridge last week, but was there this week when we had a very busy morning.  I got there just after 10 o’clock and only sat down for about 15 minutes to chat to customers until I left just after 2.30 p.m. so was quite tired when I eventually got home.  Apparently, we had 182 through the doors today - 4 fewer than last week and hopefully, we smiled and chatted to them all.

There were lots of jobs to do including bagging up basmati rice and also bagging up biological washing powder - of course, we had to be very careful that we didn’t get the two mixed up!  Can you imagine someone thinking they had basmati rice, only to find that the mixture in their saucepan was frothing up and boiling over?  

All joking aside, many of us take for granted the fact that we can buy both in our local supermarket and don’t realise how expensive these commodities are, especially washing powder.  Imagine not being to wash your clothes for weeks on end because you have to choose between buying food for your family or washing powder - perhaps you can imagine that, or perhaps you have never even thought about it.

We also have different sanitary products that customers can take - and again, many of us, particularly those with daughters, might find it difficult to imagine how to cope at certain times without access to these products.  The same applies to nappies for babies - in my day, when our boys were babies, we used terry towelling nappies and washed them every day -  but again, imagine not being able to use anything for your baby, because you had had to choose between feeding your family or buying disposable nappies.  Perhaps we have gone too far in making life about disposable items - just saying!

So many things we take for granted but which our customers are very grateful for and of course, we, in turn, are grateful to our local supermarkets for all that they give to us and the bonus is that being able to give all these things away stops them from going into landfill.

You can see many of the things that we had at the Community Fridge today, including at the bottom right, pizzas made by one of the volunteers - which always go down very well - a cup of tea or coffee with a pizza or cake for 50p is a bargain, I think.

You may be wondering what the middle shot has to do with the Community Fridge - and the answer is absolutely nothing!  We are due to have our gas pipes renewed in the area where we live and these items are on the grass just over the road, ready for when they start, possibly next week.  The four of us in our cul de sac are wondering if they will need to take up our block-paved driveways, but are hoping they can do the work without disturbing them too much.

Swindon is in the News today as our own Magic Roundabout has just been named “UK Roundabout of the Year”!  Such acclaim and for those of you who have successfully negotiated this in the past, I say “Well Done!”  In fact, we probably drive through and round this three or four times a week on our way to the Church - and once you know what you are doing, it is quite easy.  If you want to read more about it, I mentioned it in one of my Street Challenges on 22nd October 2016 - you can see it here, but this is what I said at that time and nothing much has changed!

“When turning into Queens Drive from the town centre, you must first negotiate a large roundabout consisting of five mini-roundabouts arranged around a sixth central, anti-clockwise roundabout.  It is very near to the County Ground, the home of Swindon Town Football Club and it is named after the popular children’s television series, The Magic Roundabout.  The official name of the roundabout used to be County Islands, but it was changed in the late 1980s to match its popular name and has been called The Magic Roundabout ever since.  The same overall configuration has been in place for 44 years and in 2009, it was voted the fourth scariest junction in Britain."

Great to know that our town is on the map for a GOOD reason instead of something not so good!