First things first, huge congratulations to Jo who reached her 100 tasks today and will soon be wearing her new ‘winged’ shirt with pride.

Mr Blue Sky was nowhere to be seen today for our task at the Hilsea Lido! When Katie, Tony, Jo, Jen, Angela, Rachel and Mel arrived to do some painting around the back of the Blue Lagoon Restaurant, it was grey and very blustery with more than a hint of what was to come. Not to be deterred, we gathered all of the equipment and nipped through the back entrance on to the new concourse that has been renovated to get access to the graffiti covered wall.

We started with some scraping and rubbing down to get rid of loose paint, disturbing more than a few louse that had made their home in the warm and dry space behind. Once completed, we started to paint with the delightfully named and very apt colour “High Dive” although no-one was tempted to dive into the pool today! At first we weren’t sure a first coat would come close to covering the graffiti, and we’ll probably add a second coat somewhen down the line, but it made a fine job of giving us a very bright and very clean looking canvas. Angela commented it was the perfect surface for a Mural and we’re rather hoping that the local graffiti artists aren’t tempted with the same thought when they see it! Jen got up the ladder again to do a sterling job painting the bits we couldn’t reach from the ground.

About half way through the painting session, the heavens opened and with the wind blowing in the wrong direction we got just a tad wet, but fortunately it also blew over quickly and the sun finally started to shine through – must have been all that lovely blue paint enticing it out! Whilst we all started the clean-up, Tony finished off the last small area via the ladder so that we could leave with the job 100% complete. It also meant that we could enjoy our cuppa and assortment of cake choices knowing that we’d done really great work. We’re due back at the Lido soon when we’ll start painting the bottom section with the darker blue, matching the other walls in the Lido.

It looked amazing when viewed from a distance and the Lido Committee were very very happy with what we’d done.