We usually help out at the Oasis Foundry School but we had a change of venue tonight for the Community Mission at another school in the Academy chain, Oasis Boulton. After exchanging a few messages on WhatsApp, we worked out where we were all heading and made our separate ways to the middle of Handsworth.

We joined Megan to see the different projects going on at this school around the community building they have on site. We began by pulling up weeds, picking litter and spreading the topsoil around the extremely raised front garden. This gave the four of us a great chance to reconnect and chat in a compact space which was still big enough to give us socially distant space, but small enough for us to hold conversations, apart from when motorbikes and buses passed by. Fiona especially was overjoyed to get to meet back up with us after such a long time and we all greeted with Covid friendly elbow bumps.

Afterwards, we went to the back of the building, where Megan had given us the task of clearing a distinctly overgrown rectangular planter. Inside were some plants that really didn’t want to be pulled up by hand, with the kind of thorns that can get through all of the best gardening gloves. The kind of thing that doesn’t stop us as we used the forks to loosen up the soil and get them out. The hour flew by as we were left with just a bit of bagging up and sweeping to get the area tidy again. As we were clearing up, the caretaker's cat turned up to say hello, and turned out to be really sociable, which you would imagine it might be with a few hundred 4-11 year olds turning up every weekday! A quick selfie to show the progress we made out front (and show off my lockdown castaway look) then we said our goodbyes as I turned to run across Handsworth and the others ran back to the Jewellery Quarter.