Tales from the food bank (5)

That was the hardest day’s work I’ve done for a long time, which given I haven’t done any work at all for a long time, might not mean a great deal, but we were much busier today. And I really felt I earned my wages, which come to the grand total of the square root of fuck all. Of course, no one does voluntary work to get rich, so I hope you appreciate I was jesting. In as much as one can enjoy helping people with no food get food, I enjoyed it, if you get my drift.

We don’t question why anyone comes to see us because someone has already done that and we don’t ask for ID. We are given the name and number of mouths requiring food and that’s it. We stick to it as well, so if are told we’ve been ask to supply food for, say, one person, that’s what we supply. If I was to say – hypothetically, of course – that someone came in asking for food to feed a family of five but but we had been told it was for one, they’d get food for one. If – hypothetically speaking, of course – they were to get lairy about it, well, we would have to deal with it, which, if it had happened today I would have done. My experience as a benefit fraud investigator and in other frontline jobs with the DWP came in very handy – er, I mean would come in handy if such circumstances ever arose.

I was at the front of house today, writing down a list of what someone wanted from our store cupboard. It’s my favourite job of the two available, the other being in the store cupboard finding stuff and putting it in bags. But I’ll do either at a push. The people I work with are all, without exception, lovely and totally committed to the cause. Some work full time and others run businesses, yet still somehow find time to work in our food bank. Some of our callers knew each other, which you might think would have been awkward, but it wasn’t. Their visit was born of necessity and I felt that today was merely an extension of their regular lives.

One person I saw had run out of money because of a mix-up with payments for their internet account. I won’t go into details but suffice to say having the internet was essential to this person’s life. They had £30 unexpectedly taken from their bank account and now had no money to eat. This person’s story, which they had volunteered parts of as we talked, was desperate and they really didn’t want to be here. I made sure they got some nice stuff. Another person, who clearly had serious mental health issues – takes one to know one, I suggest – had been sanctioned by the DWP and was short. I criticise no one because I don’t know the facts but I had a fair idea that this story was not made up. Vastly reduced benefits, more anxiety, stressful visit to food bank. It makes no sense to me at all.

Speaking of mental health, let’s make this all about me. I’m going through one of those down spells at the moment where I don’t want to go anywhere or do anything. Basically, I feel like shit. I went to bed just after 9.00pm last night, spent ten hours not sleeping properly and even when I did sleep it was all panicky nightmares. I had things to do this morning, which I didn’t do, but this afternoon’s business went ahead as normal. And one client pointed out just how happy and cheerful I was! “Christ,” I didn’t say. “You should see me when I’m not very depressed.” But something happened, a switch was flicked and for a few hours I came alive. Perhaps, the solution is to spend the entire week working in food banks?