This evening’s task was a double whammy. Goodgym power was needed to clear and tidy the Toad Distillery yard and also clear ivy from the railings at the top of South Park – revisiting the scene of our very first task back in 2019!

A group of us huffed and puffed (I mean ran in an athletic manner) up the hill to the distillery, meeting Bryon and the rest of the team there. The register featured “what would your desert island drink be” with answers ranging from the sensible (filtered, safe-to-drink water) to the decadent (ruby port, champagne). We then split into two groups and got to work. The team headed up by Mark (Lord Mayor and tool breaker extraordinaire) tackled the distillery yard sweeping up mountains of autumn leaves and tidying up around the outside seating, as well as planting daffodil bulbs.
The other team headed out to South Park. South Park in Oxford is a gorgeous park with fantastic views over Oxford – Dreaming Spires galore. It is also a busy cut through from town to campus for a lot of the Oxford Brookes students. With the evenings getting darker we needed to do something to make the sight-lines clearer and safer for all involved. We stripped LOADS of ivy off the railings and did a litter pick along the lane. This week’s random spot was not the usual scattering of pants but a beautiful, slightly sparkly, toadstool which we left in-situ to grow.

After all our hard and dusty work, we headed back into The Oxford Artisan Distillery for a G&T and a lovely chat and catch up.

The gin was delicious and it was so fab to be able to relax and chat to everyone after a task. Thank you Bryon!!

Welcome Dan - good to have you along!

Thanks for the report title Sarah and to Bethan for the write up.

Saturday at Oxford Mutual Aid is always a bit of a 'pot luck' task. The intention is to clean and restock the food bank, but if previous shifts have been short-staffed it can turn into a bit of a scramble to get the last of the day's food parcels prepared. That was exactly the case this week: we arrived to find about half of the day's parcels incomplete, so switched mode to parcel packing!

Sarah took on adding the fridge items to the part-prepped parcels, while Jo and I prepared the parcels which hadn't yet been started. We were very grateful that Jessica answered our call for an extra pair of hands when we realised our 4th GoodGymer had removed themselves from the task last-minute. Team work = dream work, and between us we got all food parcels sorted, deliveries put away (the return of bread mountain!), some restocking done, and the fresh fruit and veg checked over.

Great work team!

Fitness Thursdays sat down and thought about their life goals and aspirations over the Christmas period and come the New Year thought "New year, new me, I shall be MAGNIFICENT in 2021. 2021 is MY year".

This year (or at least in January) a weekly session will be listed with suggestions of workout videos which might be fun and a running/walking/cycling route to help us all explore Oxford in all its quirky beauty.

We are also using this month to support Mark Lygo and his Lord Mayor of Oxford #MoveWithMayorMark campaign. Anwen took this quite literally and went for a run with Mark! Elsewhere yoga was done with snow leopard accompaniments, jazzy hats were worn and we all continued to enjoy magical fresh air.

Please do sign up for the next session, the exercise you do is totally up to you, but I would LOVE to see your jolly photos.
'Til next week xx