Two things: 1) Last night was lovely 2) Aren’t GoodGym group runs better with sunshine and history?

Happily, we had both…

History Part #1 The evening started at Greenwich’s Old Royal Naval College buildings. And if you don’t already know, these originally housed the old Greenwich Hospital, which as far as I can tell (Wikipedia), cost £30k to build. Which ain’t bad going really.

By the £30k buildings, we began with a round of introductions and we each said our favourite type of curry. We had dahl, sweet dahl, dahl with garlic naan, chicken madras, dahl, curry with paneer, butter veggie, dahl, and plenty others with sides of saag aloo and dahl. Which is so varied and so appetising that maybe we should all head for a curry soon…?

After this mouth-watering chat, we headed for a warmup and played an old drama game favourite of Alex’s, called Yee-Haw. Basically, we all stood in a circle and someone shouted Yee-Haw!, which created this invisible energy that none of us could see, and this then moved between us until someone didn’t like the energy and they blocked it by shouting Hay-Barn!, and then someone found a snake in their shoe and proceeded to chuck it at another GoodGymmer, and this strangely gave them some new energy and they responded by becoming a bandit and shooting up the whole joint, and we continued like that for some time…

Warmed, we headed to our task via Greenwich Park (and one of the hills), and we arrived at our destination – The Bridge, which is a community hub situated in the wonderful and little-known East Greenwich Pleasaunce…

History Part #2 There’s a meet-cute of histories tonight. The old Greenwich Hospital (now the Old Royal Naval College) purchased the East Greenwich Pleasaunce as a burial ground for retired sailors residing at the old Greenwich Hospital, who were called the Greenwich Pensioners; and incidentally, Greenwich Hospital was once described as the ‘poshest pensioners home that ever was’. The history behind the purchasing of the Pleasaunce in 1857 is really quite fascinating and involves the inspection of several alternative grounds in Deptford and Hither Green (that were ruled out either due to excessive cost or the grounds actually being water-logged clay) by officious sounding Home Office inspectors. Not wanting to bore you any longer, this history is so nicely researched and written up by Pieter van der Merwe on the Friends of East Greenwich Pleasaunce website, and I’ll pop the link to this in the comments below for anyone who wants to read further.

Getting back on track (my apologies), we arrived at the gorgeous green space that The Bridge provides for the community at the top of the Pleasaunce. There, we were met by the lovely Ruth, who wanted us to remove the children’s toys from the shed and give them a good clean and wipe, before re-organising these for the next summer playtime. And so, in GoodGym Greenwich fashion, we organised into teams; some shifted the items in the shed to the entrance, where they were passed to a second team who placed them into neat piles, and then others took wipes and buckets of water to the toys to give them a good clean. And honestly, I’m talking so many toys – scooters, bikes, plastic moats, gymnastics mats… But in really just a few minutes, the toys were already being handed back to the team in the shed for stowing away. I think Ruth’s sentiments at the end of the task summed up our efforts – we’d saved her a whole day’s work – and that just shows what a group of effective altruists can do on a Wednesday evening.

After the task, some headed home, and a few others jaunted back to the old Royal Naval College / the old Greenwich Hospital for a stretch under the sunset. Awesome evening everyone and looking forward to many more with you all 😊