Sol joined Ian, Shirley and Andy from the Friends of Maidenhead Waterways to start the new season of clearing weeds in the water canal in the Widbrook Common.

The weather was warm and we enjoyed the favourable water conditions. We chatted with public passing by.

Soon it was midday, and we looked back at good work completed. More weekends to come.

Welfare visit for Mrs D

This GoodGym session was part of the annual Maidenhead United FC MacMillan coffee morning, a super community event involving a lot more than just coffee. As well as our litter pick there was walking football, a track session, and heaps of cake.

I was joined by Lisa, Tessa, Mark, Stephan and Helen. The 6 of us filled up 6 big bags of litter and could have filled many more. It can be a bit rubbish seeing how much litter is out there hiding in hedges and getting grimy in gutters but at least we made a small difference and our biceps got a good workout too!

We had a lovely sociable time, soaked up plenty of sunshine and enjoyed yummy cake. I also heard later that nearly £2000 was raised for MacMillan Cancer Support. Quite the opposite of ‘rubbish’!

Claire, Kay and Sheila helped out at the community allotment on a lovely sunny evening. Kay set about watering the remaining crops while Claire and Sheila started tackling tidying up the pot storage area. Not an easy task! So many pots of different shapes and sizes. We found some unexpected items - 2 teapots and a pair of shears, and also disposed of a number of broken pots. By the end of the session it was looking a lot tidier (although not perfect!) and hopefully everything is more accessible. One of the other volunteers, Andrea, called in to give the big fig tree some manure and a good water - it was great to be there at the same time. Mei also dropped by just as we were leaving, but stayed to have a quick chat. I hope we can arrange to coincide for a bit longer next time!

Baby Bank regulars Carol and Sheila were joined by Jane for her seco d community mission. Our task was to unpackage donations which had been given by a clothing company, consisting of returns which it is presumably not worth their while to collect and re-sell. Each package had to be opened, the packing slip collected to be disposed of as confidential waste, and the items sorted according to size. Some of the skimpier underwear was deemed to be unsuitable for handing out to families, but there was some good quality stuff which will be nice to give out to teenagers. Jane left to do her bit at the Macmillan coffee morning, but Carol and Sheila were determined to empty the travel cot of its contents. We were delighted to reach the bottom at last, so filled sacks with each size of clothing and disposed of all the packaging in the recycling bin. It was goid to have made a difference but there us much left to do

Or un (1), dau (2), tri (3), pedwar (4), pump (5), chwech (6), saith (7), wyth (8), naw (9), and deg (10).   Or even:

viens (1), divi (2), trīs (3), četri (4), pieci (5), seši (6), septiņi (7), astoņi (8), deviņi (9), and desmit (10).

As the task owner wasn't at the Age Concern Centre on our arrival we put an SOS out to Amy, Area Activator extraordinaire and whilst she set about trying to make contact we amused ourselves by exercising whilst learning to count from 1 to 10 in Welsh and Latvian, nature spotting a huge spider catching his flies for dinner, and teaching Sol about the awesome 5k Parkrun app (the purple one 🤣).

We had a good old natter too before blowing the whistle on our task at ten past seven.

Oh well, maybe next time we will deliver lots of leaflets.

And on that note it's Goodbye, hwyl fawr and ardievu from me 😂.