“We haven’t stopped today,” said our food store cupboard volunteers. They were flat-out for well for two and a half hours. I wheeled out my old joke, if you can call it that, about how we’d now be on overtime rates, which attracted a deserved groan. But they’ll have been knackered by the time we closed. They’re amazing people.
The job of finding food items and then packing them is beyond me. I wish I was joking. I can never remember where anything is and the last and only time I did it, I succeeded only in slowing down output to the extent that almost nothing was getting done. My volunteer friends deserved an explanation. “I’ve got ADHD,” I blurted out. “I can’t cope in here.” It must have sounded ridiculous – it felt ridiculous saying it – but it was true. As in so many situations in life my brain turned into mulch. So, I went back to meeting users to establish what it is they need and generally trying to make them feel as comfortable as possible.
When people come in to our food bank, it’s important never to judge them. One person we saw today was making their third visit in the time I have been volunteering. I don’t know why that is but it is not for me to ask questions. Someone else has already done that, so what’s the point in duplicating work? All that matters is that they haven’t got any food and we have got food to give them.
I dread to think what it will be like when chancellor Jeremy Hunt allows a further 40% increase in the unit price of energy from April. I can certainly feel the effects on my income and lifestyle but that’s nothing compared to those who are even further down the food chain. Because today I saw people who were not choosing between heating and eating. They couldn’t afford to do either. God knows how much debt some people are running up. One person came a fair distance by car to see us today. One of their main problems was keeping the car going at all. Because car insurance had gone up so much, they were behind with that, too, and paying an extra £37 a month to repay it. Last year, they were struggling to stand still. Now they were gradually slipping backwards as “things are getting out of control”, adding, “There’s no end to it.”
I try to keep people cheerful when they come in, but I can’t lie and pretend things are going to get better, because they aren’t. Things are getting worse, much worse, and now we see food banks as being a normal part of society, so normal that Prince William and Kate Middleton went to a food bank the other week, ostensibly to help out. That’s absolutely not normal, is it? A fabulously rich couple, living in various palaces and mansions, turning up to shake hands with people who have nothing. It was every bit as bad as Rishi Sunak’s toe-curling visit to a homeless shelter, when he talked to a homeless man about working in the financial sector and ending by asking him what he was doing at the weekend. Well-meaning or just a photo opportunity? Either way it didn’t work. If the Windsors turned up at our gaff today, I’m not sure I would be bowing in deference.
There is still some aspiration at the bottom of the heap. A parent talked lovingly about their daughter who they desperately wanted to have the chance to go to university. The girl’s exam results so far, along with her predicted grades, indicated she had a chance. I didn’t say it, but what an achievement that would be. A child from poverty-stricken household, seemingly destined to go the same way as her parents, bucking the trend and finding a way out and a way up. This is the reality of food bank Britain. The haves are able to buy success for their children, the poorest barely have any hope that their children might do better than they did. And we stand meekly by, just accepting this gross inequality and unfairness, saying that’s just the way it is, some things will never change. But they are changing: they’re getting worse.
We did our bit today, those who donated food, those who sorted and packed it and even those of us who just take the orders. The day I think food banks are a normal thing will be the day I pack it in. But they aren’t. And I won’t.
