OG's to Newbies and everyone else in between

It's our 6th birthday ... I don't feel 6 years older than when I first started doing GoodGym! Maybe it's the GG vibe that keeps us young?!! But what keeps us young is all the love we get from being in this group. And OMG I am blown away that sooooo many of you came this evening to help celebrate our 6th birthday! I really was only expecting the 10 that signed up to be there so when I saw another 10 mysteriously appear behind the church doors...it was like a devine intervention! Thank you to you all for making the effort to come along tonight.

Five going on Six

This past year we have as always achieved so much. We won an award at the Slough CSV #OneSlough Awards for our Innovative Ways for helping the community. We celebrated Jean's 90th birthday. We've had new task owners like Global Education Trust and Raggy Rd Allotments as well as our usuals. We've formed new friendships. We've had new members from the refugee community join us and sadly we've lost a few too. We battled the Bibby (and won!). Ricky finally got his 100th!. Jen hit 450 plus!; Ruth served her century (tonight); Sut soared to 400; Pam ploughed to over 370 and Sara smashed out over 260, Sandy succeeded with nearly 230 and Helen hacked out 77 heading towards her 100th! We karaoked at Christmas; have been frequent flyers and litter heroes and had allot of fun digging around. We've networked and insta-lly promoted GG as soon as the task has been done. We Beat-the Boat but still have The Big Half, Berlin and Vitality to smash!

There is always so much going on in the small yet compacted town that is Slough. And we've collected over 100 bags of rubbish around Slough since our last birthday!

We started the evening doing our usual. Meeting up Upton Court Park and making our way down to our task location of St Mary's Church (with the little surprise at the Church). Our task was to do a bit inside and a bit outside. Inside we had Sandy, Abdul, Roisin, Ruth and Pam sweeping, dusting and wiping whilst everyone else were outside either litter picking or cutting back overgrowth. With our usual grace we got through the tasks fairly swiftly, leaving enough time for cake....

But as with any special event we did have a twist.

Goodlympics

I don't know about you but I love the Olympics and watch as many events as I can. So whilst I was watching the ladies Rugby last night I came up with the idea of doing our very own Olympic events. Luckily I have 3 very eager helpers in my household who designed some of the games, drew out the signs and even made us an Olympic flame

It's never good to be too prepared

At home, I had prepped a sheet of paper outlining each person signed up (the good ones who signed up!) with a partner and a little Olympic style game. But when you get 10 others turn up (the bad ones for not signing up..but oh so good to see them!), I had to throw my paper away and improvise..

So in the end we had:

• Runners Beans We had Sara, Pam, Gauri and Meera on bean bags races. Pam showed so much grace as she eloquently balanced the bean bag on her head whilst walking round the war memorial without it falling off her head even once! Gold standard right there;

• N'Sync were Jenny ,Sandy, Ruth and Roisin on a synchronized swim routine. And wow how good were they! They could (just maybe) give Tom and Noah a few tips??;

• The Happy Hoppers were Harsha,Keira ,Chrissy, Agnija, Jen and Devajani. They gave us an entertaining minute of their show jumping skills using litter pickers! What style; what class!;

• Bean Poles were Abdulaziz, Peter, Ricky and Jean on bean bag throws. Ricky took an early lead closely followed by Abdul, but Jean stole the show with her sideways throw!

Each team displayed excellent execution, flare and skill. Team GB doesn't know it's missing some key players from Slough over in Paris

Flaming 'ell

We ended the night with the Goodlympic flame being passed from member to member as it makes it's way (slowy...might take it 4 years) to LA. Great solo efforts by all!

Ruth's 100th

Huge well done to Ruth on achieving her 100th Good Deed tonight! Ruth has been a founder member and supporter of ours since we started and we love having her along whenever she is free. Well done Ruth.

And then there was cake! Thank you to Helen for baking such delicious cup cakes and to everyone for being such good sports in all my mad games.

Thank you all so much for making another birthday event an enjoyable one.

We were back at St Mary’s Church on Church Street for our Monday #DoGoodGetFit task. We all had ‘active travel’ to get to the Church on time on a lovely cool Monday evening.

On arrival, Jean our task owner gave us access to the Church and asked us to do a few tidy up jobs that the Church desperately needed.

So we got to work pretty quickly with Jason taking the sweeping job (once he was happy with the broom!), Maya also went on sweeping duties then onto iron gate cleaning.

Devajani was already giving the iron work a good clean whilst Agni and Jean were all over the pulpit with Jean giving us her worldly advise.

I took some time out to sweep the altar and wipe down the pews with the rest of the team joining me once they’d finished their areas.

The areas looked so much fresher once we’d finished. Such a beautiful church and we were very happy to help give it a spring clean.

We look forward to returning in a few weeks time.

Next week we will be at the allotments on Stoke Road. Hope to see you there.

Tonight's task has a theme going through it...and I'll give you a pew to what it is!

When I checked the sign up list last night and only I was signed up, I did have a momentary panic so I sent a little note on the whatsapp group to see if anyone else could join me...luckily both Peter and Sara were able to come along...pew for that.

I knew Leonie (our task owner would be present), so I wasn't too phased if I did have to do the task alone, however it's always good to have some company.

Our meet up point was Upton Court Park at 6.30pm with the option of a walk or run down to the Church. Only Peter met me at the park, the rest of the team made their own way to the Church (on time)...on arrival we did see a few people lingering around the entrance so I personally was very grateful to have Peter and Hamid (who was now with us too) to wait with....a blessing in disguise!

We were soon joined by Devajani so were ready to go inside to see what our task was.

Leonie explained that they had a concert on Sunday and needed some help with sweeping the floors, vacuuming the altar, cleaning the pews and the entrance area....and a little bit of high dusting!

We had a web of laughter as we chatted, caught up on our weekly antics and cracked on with the task in hand.

Peter and Hamid took to the sweeping duties like pro's whilst Sara was on hoovering and Devajani and I took a pew.

It is always amazing how quickly and efficiently we can all work and get the task done. Within 50 minutes we had swept, hoovered and wiped. Then Hamid took the longest duster we have ever seen and cleared away cobwebs that had most likely been hanging around for years! And that's no web of lies! But pew we did it!

Today's community mission was to do a litter pick at St Mary's Church in preparation for the Sunday Remembrance Service and Parade.

We had 7 team members eager to collect as much litter as we could to ensure the church grounds were in tip top condition.

At first sight the grounds already looked spick and span, but sometimes you never know what's hidden behind the deep depths of the grass! However today there was very little.

At 11am we observed a 2 minutes silence for the fallen soldiers.

We completed the task in under an hour and collected 4 bags of rubbish (which is actually really good for this task).

Thank you to everyone who attended

Such a glorious evening today with the sun beaming down on us as we carried out an environmental task at St Mary's Church on Church St.

We had a mixed bag of those who wanted to meet at the task location and those who met me at Upton Court park for a little warm up and jog/walk down to the Church.

Great to have Sandy back after a little break and of course the usual team. As the walkers set off, the runners did a warm up and jogged down after them.

The task tonight was to litter pick the grounds. As the Church has a footpath going through it, it does get used by residents as a cut through which unfortunately results in excess litter.

The last time we did this task here was on the King's Coronation bank holiday as part of the big help out. We, alongside local residents and businesses collected over 30 bags of rubbish that day!

On arrival we were met by Reverend Scott, who gave us an overview of the areas he wanted us to focus on - which was basically all of it. It was nave of us to think we wouldn't find any litter as sadly the whole grounds were full of it.

We knew we had to be a litter bit careful of the needles on the Church grounds and low and behind, Sara and Mehdi found a bunch of them tucked away in a corner. We used the safe methods of disposal into the sharps bin the Church had - we took no chancels on this litter!

The best way to tackle this task was to split off into pairs or trio's and take a section of the grounds each. Our paths crossed as we worked our way around picking up cans, crisp packets, clothing, handbags and even a £5 note! Good find Maya

Within 40 minutes we had altared the way the grounds looked and holy smoke we had collected 12 bagful's of rubbish.

As always, the Church are always very hospitable and had cold drinks and fruit for us at the end of the task, whilst the team enjoyed that, Sara and I had a lovely chat with Reverand Scott -about the Church, it's history and burials! - he's a font of all knowledge

Next week it's bank holiday Monday but we will still be out doing our good deeds. We will be at Salt hill park at 6.30pm for a litter picking task.

But before we go here is a picture to show how bendy we are (or not!)...well done Hamid! Clearly the winner!

PS.. thank you Jen for all the puns

This evening we did our first task with St Mary's Church on Church St. Such a stunning building which needed a little tlc around the permiter of the actual church where the weeds were starting to grow.

A very warm welcome to Deborah on her first task with us. We hope you enjoyed it.

Our meet up point this evening was Upton Court Park which was 1km from the task location.

It was great to have our 3 friends from Slough Refugee Support English class back again.

Whilst we waited for the rest of the team to arrive, Pam, Claire, Mehdi, Ehsan and Mohammad were treated to a warm up session! We took this opportunity to teach new English words to the guys whilst they taught us the equivalent in Parsi!

Word Association

Whats the best way to learn a new language? You link it to a word that sounds similar.... so

• Lunge is lunch;

• Jogging is joking;

• Roundabout is circle

You dig it?

With a quick text from Peter saying he'd started walking down with Deborah, the rest of us gave Pam a walking head start before we starting joking down Upton Court Park to the Church.

On arrival we met Devajani, Claire, Agnia, Kam and Scott (our task owner). Scott explained what needed doing and had kindly provided refreshments for us.

We then broke off into smaller groups and got to work on our patch.

Within no time we had removed all the weeds and had the area looking brand new! We then enjoyed some cold drinks and fruit... thank you St Mary's Church. With talk of a return task we set off back to our start locations.

Next week we are at Langley Memorial Park on Langley Rd and corner of High St Langley for a community litter pick and fitness session

Though we also have a litter pick at Black Park on Friday. Plus volunteering at Cippenham Carnival on Saturday.

https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions