A - Z Challenge - V is for Volunteering

This year I'm blogging about my local area.  

My area?  Highams Park which is in the borough of Waltham Forest in North East London, (UK) a little known place that nestles between Chingford and Woodford that most people only come to if they have a specific reason to - if not we usually get bypassed.  Suits us.

Having lived in Forest Gate in East London for 36 years (and for my husband 65 years!) moving was a big deal for us.  But we've been in Highams Park since September 2020 so I feel I know enough about it now to fill out 26 posts! 

We've only moved just over 5 miles but we didn't know this area at all before moving here.  Although of course we did have a good look around when looking for a house and there were a number of things we wanted on our check list.

Well I'm writing this post late in the day - it's been a busy day filled with helping out with school runs for my eldest grandson and Volunteering!

Being retired I have a fair amount of spare time. Once the pandemic was finally over I began to look at ways to involve myself in the local community.  

One thing I have done is help out at some of the big events organised by the Highams Park Planning Group such as the Summer Fair and Christmas Market.  This is a good way of being involved and helping out but without a big commitment.  I've been in situations before where I've found myself sucked in to things and then it's been tricky to take a step back.

The main volunteering I do though is to volunteer at the Foodback run through The Hub which I wrote about here.  The Foodbank runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I help out on Thursdays.  Again I didn't want to get overloaded and my Hubby attends a walking group on Thursdays so it made sense to do something on the same day rather than tying up another day.  

The Foodbank operates in the local church and during the session we provide hot drinks and snacks as well as various other services.

There are various roles for the volunteers during the session.  There are people who serve the people coming for food.  We don't just give out bags - people can choose from a wide range of fresh and canned/dried goods with amounts determined by the size of their family.  Then we have Befrienders who will sit and chat with people and try and see how they can be helped in ways other than just providing them with food.

My skill sets are put to good use in the store room.  Each Thursday we get a delivery from The Felix Project an organisation that collects and distributes food that would otherwise go to waste.  Some of what we get is prepared meals that can be microwaved but we also get a range of fresh food and a lot of dried and canned goods.  We also get donations from the public that are collected from various collection points locally as well as donations from a nearby bakery.  We also have a group of people that have allotments who donate food.  Grants and fundraising also provide funds to buy goods.  

The deliveries/collections have to be sorted and either put out to be given to people or stored for future use.  The store room is not huge and sometimes it feels like a game of tetris - moving things around to accommodate all the goods.  There is a good shelving system in place as well as a number of fridges and freezers but finding space for everything can sometimes be a challenge, especially on days when everything has to be moved out of the church because of events taking place over the weekend.

The other role that I regularly undertake is to work in the kitchen.  This involves making cups of tea or coffee, serving cakes/pastries and preparing jacket potatoes or simple things like beans on toast.  Nothing very complicated but surprisingly many volunteers shy away from that role.  I quite enjoy it because it does give me contact with the people using the foodbank.

The good thing about volunteering at the foodbank is that there are enough people that if 1 or 2 are missing we can still function.  There is a paid manager who co-ordinates the volunteers and at the beginning of each month we're asked to say which dates we can commit to.  It usually works out fine and the nice thing is that if numbers are low on  a Thursday for example, people from the Tuesday session will help out and vice versa.

Phew I'm just going to get this posted on the day!  Only 4 more A-Z posts to do.

A - Z Challenge 2024 - U is for Undertakers

This year I'm blogging about my local area.  

My area?  Highams Park which is in the borough of Waltham Forest in North East London, (UK) a little known place that nestles between Chingford and Woodford that most people only come to if they have a specific reason to - if not we usually get bypassed.  Suits us.

Having lived in Forest Gate in East London for 36 years (and for my husband 65 years!) moving was a big deal for us.  But we've been in Highams Park since September 2020 so I feel I know enough about it now to fill out 26 posts! 

We've only moved just over 5 miles but we didn't know this area at all before moving here.  Although of course we did have a good look around when looking for a house and there were a number of things we wanted on our check list.

I was struggling to find something to write about for U and then I realised that at some point we will need an Undertaker.  Thankfully there are two Undertakers in Highams Park so we'll be ok.

I've left a letter for my kids with details of what I'd like.  Hubby doesn't give two hoots what happens to him, or his ashes.  At least that leaves me free to do as I think best if he goes first.

And on that cheerful note I'm off to think about the remaining letters of the alphabet!

A - Z Challenge 2024 - T is for Transport

This year I'm blogging about my local area.  

My area?  Highams Park which is in the borough of Waltham Forest in North East London, (UK) a little known place that nestles between Chingford and Woodford that most people only come to if they have a specific reason to - if not we usually get bypassed.  Suits us.

Having lived in Forest Gate in East London for 36 years (and for my husband 65 years!) moving was a big deal for us.  But we've been in Highams Park since September 2020 so I feel I know enough about it now to fill out 26 posts! 

We've only moved just over 5 miles but we didn't know this area at all before moving here.  Although of course we did have a good look around when looking for a house and there were a number of things we wanted on our check list.

Transport was near the top of the list.  We do have a car but we wanted to future proof our location as much as possible.  For example we wanted somewhere that we could walk to the things we needed or use public transport if we got to the stage of not being able to drive.  Plus it is becoming more and more difficult to drive around London, not to mention expensive.  Fortunately our car is fairly new so it doesn't fall into the emissions charging scheme but finding anywhere to park is becoming harder all the time.  I try not to use the car if I don't need to but sometimes you just have to - for example going to our daughter's house, which is just over 3 miles away, takes 10 minutes by car, 36 minutes by bus & train, except the bus is currently on a major diversion and would take much longer than Google thinks.

Anyway.....we are a 10 minute walk from Highams Park Station.  This is on the London Overground (Liverpool Street to Chingford line).  It is 2 stops to Walthamstow with a connection to the London Underground.  Trains run every 15 minutes most of the time and are air conditioned.  At rush hour they can be a bit crowded travelling home but not sardine style crowded - just seats full and quite a few people standing.  Going into London is never a problem as we are the last but one stop on the line.

We can also get to Walthamstow by bus - the stop is right opposite our house and the return stop is about 200 yards down the road.  Walthamstow has a busy bus station with lots of routes available to us.

We could also get to the Central Line of the Underground by getting a bus in the opposite direction to Woodford station.  Except there is currently a problem with a road bridge that goes over the railway lines close to the station.  It needs to be reinforced so currently the bus is driving 3 sides of a rectangular diversion if that makes sense.  Originally the signs said the diversion would be in place until 31st March.  That was revised to 30th September and today I noticed that a couple of signs now say "until further notice".  It's not looking good.

As a further problem - our daughter lives the other side of the tracks from us so we have to cross them.  There is a crossing point close to her house but, the crossing point between that one, and the one that is totally closed, is only half open - with traffic lights controlling the traffic.  It makes for fun when I'm doing the school run for my Grandson, especially if the traffic lights break!  There are only certain points where you can cross over the railway and everyone seems to be trying to do just that.

Thankfully I only have to cross that bridge once or twice a week.

The London Overground system actually connects areas of London quite well with many stations interchanging with the Underground system:

Sorry for the poor quality of this - you can view the original here.

But soon our section will be known as the Weaver Line - all the various sections are being given names.  You can read more about this here.

The renaming and all the rebranding that it will entail is costing over £6 million.  I'm sure there are better things that money could be spent on.

A - Z Challenge 2024 - S is for Supermarket

This year I'm blogging about my local area.  

My area?  Highams Park which is in the borough of Waltham Forest in North East London, (UK) a little known place that nestles between Chingford and Woodford that most people only come to if they have a specific reason to - if not we usually get bypassed.  Suits us.

Having lived in Forest Gate in East London for 36 years (and for my husband 65 years!) moving was a big deal for us.  But we've been in Highams Park since September 2020 so I feel I know enough about it now to fill out 26 posts! 

We've only moved just over 5 miles but we didn't know this area at all before moving here.  Although of course we did have a good look around when looking for a house and there were a number of things we wanted on our check list.

One necessity is food so we wanted a good supermarket nearby.

We have a big Tesco store right in the centre of town:

It isn't one of their biggest style stores but it has the full range of groceries plus a small home department as well as clothing, toys, books etc.  It also has a Costa Coffee area.  There aren't any other concessions in there but it does serve our immediate day to day needs.  And to be honest, we still get our weekly shop delivered - from Tesco.  They have a good delivery service that we relied on heavily during the pandemic and continue to use.

One slightly unusual feature of the store is that the car parking areas are on the ground and basement levels, while the actual shopping floor is on the first floor.  This necessitates using the travellator or lifts to get from your car to the shop.  Fine when everything is working normally but, the lifts in particular seem to regularly have problems.  Of course if the travellator isn't working you can still walk up and down them but you can't push a trolley up or down them.  Not good if you have heavy bags of shopping.  Thankfully, because we get our main shop, particularly the heavy bulky things delivered this hasn't been too much of a problem for us.  It does spark heated debate on Facebook though.

We also have several smaller grocery stores but Tesco is a good all round store for when you need for example an extra small frying pan, or some socks or a present and card for someone.  Or new bath mats.

They also have a collecting basket for the Foodbank I volunteer at and a bookshelf of second hand books raising money for charity.  Oh and a big tick in my checklist - toilets!