Tracey and Gwyn met the cheerful group at Parkinson's Cricket. Alex had brought a new gadget today: a bowling machine. The group batted the balls into the ceiling, the lights and the curtains. We finished with tea and biscuits.

Tracey and Gwyn met the team at Derbyshire Cricket Foundation for their summer (haf) holiday Holiday Activities and Food session. The weather was typically summery as expected: it was haf o hyd after all. We had a nature treasure hunt, animal encounters (with a tarantula, ball python, bearded dragon and more), a light lunch and an art session.

For tomorrow's community mission, we were required to complete some "simple" online training: Level 2 Food Hygiene. Well, it took a LONG time, but it's done now. Phew!

About to help at DCF’s holiday event for children, A. said that we needed food hygiene level 2 and arranged a course, saying that it was a brief online one. There were many, many computer problems! Noticing that the descriptions online of level 2 said that it would take over 3 hours, a start time of 08:06 seemed appropriate to finish by high noon. It took until half past seven and two emails to the course provider!

There’s 13 hours to go until the event starts …

There have been a lot of ch-ch-ch-changes in Mrs A's garden, since Gwyn and Tracey last visited. She had organised some gravel, the colour of stardust, and an elegant pot plant, which transformed the side of the garden we tackled last time.

We set to work weeding on the other side. There were plenty of scary monsters (worms and slugs - ugh!) and some super creepy-crawlies, including a green ladybird, and spiders (from Mars?), but we filled the bin and got the membrane down with the help of a local Major Tom cat.

We weren't under pressure for time, so we also did a little bit of skip filling, to ensure our moment of fame on the heroes leaderboard. Mrs A was so grateful, kindly supplying us with drinks and ice lollies, and has already phoned to order more gravel so the two sides of her garden will match! There's no room for a laughing gnome, though!

Mrs C is a charming lady, full of cheery personality, and she has a lovely garden that needed just a little extra weeding. One bed in particular had been taken over by wild strawberries, so I pulled these up, along with a few stubborn bits of stray grass, and things are looking a lot neater now.