next time I’ll take spices and fresh veggies with me

It was a normal sort of afternoon at soup kitchen , except it wasn’t …I was promoted to the maker of the soup ( normally I just make the sandwiches and then adopt the sort of ‘meet,greet,serve and chat ‘ role out the front ) and Andrzej came instead of John , as John was doing a Leonardo and painting our hall and landings ceilings . Back to the soup – an hour to make 120 pints of the stuff .Imagine all that sweating,chopping and simmering. Imagined ? Now put that to the back of your mind and think opening a huge catering packet of Golden Vegetable , mixing it into a paste ,adding boiling water and anything else you can find to give it some flavour . Soupy was packed , the busiest I have ever seen it .They were queuing out the door , so my soup became organic , more powder was added ( minestrone ) , more packets of frozen sweetcorn and to bulk it up -ten tins of tomatoes .Darren had to shoot up to Tescos for more bread ,biscuits,milk , juice and grated cheese- which I sprinkled on my soup and made it look rather bijou ( and gave it a bit more taste ) . Everything was going fine – there were a few argy bargy moments , and I was pleased to see ,a few people had bought their own empty jam-jars and were decanting their soup into them , to take home ( wait til that Covent Garden range get hold of my recipe ) and then from outside came a big shout for Andrzej ( soon to be called Super Andrzej ) . A Polish guy was having a seizure and his friends were trying to help by pinning him down and putting a stick between his teeth – none of them were sober . So between us we told them told them to take the stick out , release him , get him in the recovery position and find something to put under his head , There was lots of dialogue in Polish and Andrzej established the guy also had a heart condition ,and that is why one of his friends had stuffed 2 mugs down his shirt ?? After a 999 call ,the wonderful paramedics came and took over the situation… which was good ,because while we were outside ,we had avoided the one stressful part of soup kitchen – the decision of who was going to clean the toilet ?