The main topic of conversation at our food bank today, including both volunteers and food bank users, was of course small boats crossing the English Channel and more importantly the people who were in them. When Rishi Sunak said yesterday, “It’s the people’s priority,” you just knew that this was a man with his finger on the pulse. Except that no one mentioned small boats, or pretty well anything else except obtaining food for people who would otherwise starve. It was another very busy day.
It didn’t help that I wasn’t in the best state of mental health, my brain, or what’s left of it, overwhelmed by thinking about too many things and so being unable to prioritise stuff. That made me feel tired and the fact that I couldn’t stop yawning must have made that all too obvious.
One thing I always notice at our food bank is the comradery of our users. Some know each other, some simply talk to other users in a kindly way. And when young children are present, as they were today, there were simple acts of kindness as people went to get sweets or just engaged with them. I’m not sure the youngsters have the first idea they are in a food bank or indeed know what it does and I certainly hope that’s the case. Indeed, I hope the only memory they have is of going to a place with mummy or daddy and meeting nice people. I’d hate for them to realise how poor they were. When I was growing up, my mum and me were very poor but somehow she hid it from me, making it appear as though we lived the same lifestyle as everyone else. It was only as time went by, I learned the truth. I reckon that had food banks existed in the 1960s and 1970s, we would have been eligible. Whether my mum would have lowered her pride and lost her self-respect, as she would certainly have seen it, to attend a food bank I will never know. The fact that we just about managed does not mean our lives wouldn’t have been better with a few extras.
Today I saw a mixture of people who had been to see us before and those who hadn’t. The process is always exactly the same. We go through the same list and we give people what we can. Today we were completely out of sugar but other than that we were able to provide most of what people wanted.
There is a certain basic honesty among so many. When I run through the list of what people can have, if they already have something, they usually tell me and don’t request it. They could easily take the item and store it for the next rainy day, but instead they say, “Save it for someone who needs it,” which is so generous when it comes from someone who has next to nothing. Thinking of others in your darkest moments. You almost wish that there was, one day, a heaven for people to go to and a hell for those politicians who have run our country into the ground and made food banks the norm.
I suppose it’s possible that some users take the piss a bit, taking stuff they don’t really need. That’s certainly what some people believe on the back of anecdotes and rumour. I’ve got two answers for that. One is that I don’t believe many, if any, people take the piss. Two is that I honestly don’t care. If you were trying to rip off a food bank, your sights would be very low and you’d probably be very close to requiring our services anyway. Either way, I won’t lose sleep about it. I leave my cynicism at home when I’m in the food bank because I have no need for it. I reserve that for the likes of Sunak, whose politics is sinking from the gutter to the sewer.
Making food banks a thing of the past should be “the people’s priority”. But Sunak clearly thinks there aren’t enough votes in it.
