On Tuesday morning, just after nine, I found myself in another queue - this time for the community fridge, another small constellation of volunteers and visitors gathered in the cold. This one sits on a footpath between 'here' and 'there,' a place you can’t miss if you’re walking with your head up. Love Haslemere Hate Waste, they call it. A community stitched together by the simple refusal to let food go to waste, or people go unseen.

Inside, the Pavilion was already alive with the quiet choreography of kindness: smiles, nods, hands offering help without ceremony. Rising food prices have made these places lifelines, and the people who run them seem to understand that dignity is as essential as bread.

When I reached the bread table, a volunteer looked at me with uncomplicated generosity and said, “Take as many baguettes as you like.”

But generosity is not always simple on the receiving end.

I took the smallest baguette - the one least likely to draw attention, a quarter the size of the others. Anything larger felt like it might reveal something I’m not ready to admit, not to myself and certainly not to anyone else. There is a belief that runs quietly in the background of my life, steady as a heartbeat:  

“That is not for you. You must live without that.”

So when a feeling arises - I’d like that or I need that - it collides with that old belief. The result is a kind of pragmatic sadness, a reflex to step back, to shrink, to take less.

I walked away with the small baguette and a small loaf. Later, I gave both to Sarah at the charity shop.

Two stories unfolded that morning.  

One was the town’s story: volunteers offering abundance, neighbours helping neighbours, a community refusing to let anyone fall through the cracks.  

The other was mine: learning, slowly and awkwardly, how to stand in the presence of generosity without flinching, without disappearing.

Both stories are true. Both are happening in the same town. And perhaps, in time, they will meet.

Thank you to Anil Sharma for sharing his words with us. You can read more of Anil's work - Edge Dweller, Who Bears the Night and One Hot Breakfast and Food Bag at a Time on the This is Haslemere website.