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Written by Ros
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We had to be there by 8am, not the most inviting concept for someone who hates getting up early. Well I was up at 5am – a huge achievement in itself and the 3 of us (myself, Jem and Bee) were on the road, in my little mini, by ten past 6. Well, despite the reluctance to get up, I can say that this is a brilliant time to travel through London. 2 hours from Newbury to east London and the North Circular was a dream. (Yes, you read correctly, a dream, not a nightmare as you may expect). So we arrived in good time for the briefing. Not having been before, I had no expectations and was interested in seeing how this sort of thing ran. Well, I was really impressed. We had 700 baskets made up in 2 hours. Apparently that was a record on previous years buy, hey, to a newcomer, it could have been the standard. So by 11am they were organising drivers, and obviously I volunteered, having brough my car with me, and we packed 10 hampers into the back of my mini. Unfortunately we couldn’t fit Bee in as well, so myself and Jem went off round the local area and, we later heard that Bee went off to Kent with another delivery run. This was where things started to run slightly less smoothly due to the fact that everyone else had woken up and decided to drive down the London streets, but we made it round with expert navigation from Jem and his I-phone and delivered our baskets to a bunch of surprised people, some of whom seemed quite moved by the idea of such spontaneous generosity. After a brief stop off at West Ham football ground (requested by Jem, obviously), we returned to base. As people returned, stories were shared of their experiences out delivering. The one that stuck the most for me was of a lady who on receiving her basket shared that she was just about to go out and spend her last £30 on food when they turned up. Talk about synchronisity. We didn’t stay for the partying in the evening as yours truly was getting rather tired. So we headed back to Newbury with ideas of how we could start something locally. We can’t do it alone, so if anyone is interested in getting involved (it needs a team), please let us know. We’ll be starting to talk about possibilities early in 2009.
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