Often when I’m talking to people about Longfield, I will say ‘you know, it used to be called Cotswold Care’ because then people make the connection. The other words I use is ‘it’s a hospice but it’s a virtual hospice or a hospice at home. It doesn’t have beds, the bed is in your home’.
I first learnt about Longfield through my wife who was a volunteer in the kitchen, she isn’t now. For most of my life I have served on management committees and I thought it would be quite a change to do something more practical. I was interviewed about seven years ago and now drive a van each Tuesday. I normally have the same partner in the van who started the same time as me and we have become great friends.
As you get older, you know more and more people who need hospice type care at the end of their life. Many are helped by Longfield, Sue Ryder, Macmillan or other similar organisations. Therefore volunteering for Longfield has that feel-good factor about it.
Each week I pick up the van from Minchinhampton, drive to the warehouse where we load up the van. There are three vans on every day mainly driven by volunteers covering North, Central and South routes. I do the South round and go to the same shops every week, conveying items from the warehouse to shops, picking up more items at each shop. A lot of goods get transferred between shops because some shops are better at selling one type of donation than another.
The other problem shops have, despite lots of signs, is that sometimes people will leave donations in the doorway which officially is fly tipping. It happened a lot during the Lockdown. Then when it rains it becomes unsuitable for sell and is rubbish. So, we also collect the rubbish from the shops and dispose of it by taking it to the incinerator.
Normally, we pick up the van about 8.20am although finishing time is variable depending on the quantity of goods we move. At the moment we finish around 2 pm although we can have longer days. As well as going to all the shops, we might have to go to a donor’s house to pick up items either because the goods are bulky, eg furniture, or because the donor is old and frail and unable to take items to their local shop. For example, last week we picked up a table from a house in Slimbridge. Our round can be variable and the quantity of goods from each shop can vary from week to week. It is, of course, physical work.
We always start at the warehouse where we are greeted by a mass of items to transfer to the various shops on our round. So our first thing will be to load an empty van with what is at the warehouse for shops on our round. As we go to each shop, we drop off the items and the shop will give us transfers to other shops and rubbish.
I have found staff always very friendly and very grateful. The work is enjoyable and I have met new people, made good friends, whilst at the end of the day you feel you are making a small contribution to the running of an important organisation.
