Last night we had an epic trip to Beckenham Park Care Home. It's a pretty big site and they had lots of space for Christmas decorations!

Me and David met at the Bridge House, we met Cat, Clare and Kelsey en route, spotted the David Bowie ⚡️ before meeting everyone else at the care home.

We'd been assigned three trees to decorate...

LBDouble-Yule

One room was in the cricket-themed bistro. In no time, a classy red and silver themed tree was created. David also added a few select decorations to the rest of the room...

In the second room, Kat did an incredible job, using her knitting skills to untangle a load of fairy lights. Some white feather boas gave the tree a snowy-vibe.

And the final tree was a bit mismatch... with all the leftover decorations.

The care home team provided a few glasses of baileys, very greatful for our help.

We also discovered a Kelsey Way sign. 🙌

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Nice job everyone! 🎄

We had the first of our bulb planting tasks tonight, with nine volunteers making their way to Alexandra Recreation Ground to plant some tulips while the squirrels were asleep. The task almost didn't happen as our task owner Millie wasn't well (get well soon!) but Mark saved the evening by cycling to pick up the keys to the tool shed on his night off. What a legend!

Once we'd got the shed open, we had fun trying to work out which bulbs were tulips. Luckily our resident horticulturalist Rosie was on hand to guide us and give us tips on optimal bulb planting.

Our next challenge was breaking into the soil: as we've had very little rain over the last few weeks, the ground was rock hard, which definitely put the Gym in GoodGym. After a bit of trial and error, though, we perfected our hole digging technique (the spade as a pogo stick approach worked best) and in less than half an hour we had planted all our bulbs. Big shout out to Michelle who was taking part in her first task - I appreciate that digging holes in the dark is a pretty unconventional way to spend a Monday night (and definitely attracted some bemused looks from dog walkers...) so well done for getting stuck in!

After filling in our holes and covering them with leaves to confuse the squirrels, we ran back to the Bridge House for stretches. Excellent work team!

An interesting change from the weekday office normality….

Three Goodgymmers and three local volunteers arrived at Dacres Wood Nature Reserve.

The task was to tackle the over grown pond weeds.

First thing, think PPE…. We all got kitted out in wadders and rubber gloves and made our way to the pond.

With forks and stabilising sticks we set about the task of clearing the weeds, and remaining our balance (I am please to report no one fell over).

Kat, Kat and Paul (Goodgym) along with John, John and Oscar (Local volunteers) made large inroads into clearing the reeds.

A pleasant two hours was spent talking about all things running, and local history with one of the Johns who has lived in the local area for over 50 years!

Two hours flew by, and after the tools were put away and we were hosed down everyone went on their separate ways to get some well deserved sustenance.

With a bit of determination, it will be possible to move Mr L’s spare bed for him to sleep downstairs but sadly the efforts of Cat and Linda were scuppered by bad luck on this mission today. First we found the bed frame was just slightly too wide to fit round the stair bannisters, no matter how we manoeuvred it. Then, after carrying it back to the upstairs bedroom and turning it upside down, we managed to free the metal sprung base from brackets on the wooden end-boards… only to hear the disappointing sound of one of the four legs snapping under the strain. Now the leg will need repairing before the bed can be reassembled for use. We moved the mattress and frame sections to the downstairs sitting room, and Mr L declared himself happy that at least the job was started!

Some top teamwork tonight as we took on two tasks at St John’s The Evangelist (many other St John churches are available).

We met at the Bridge House as usual, chatted over our favourite forms of light, from the horizon’s blade of sunlight at dawn to candles that smell of lychee, it was a warming selection.

We jogged over to the church where they have a beautiful community garden, some wild patches and a hell of a lot of leaves. We met Sara who had prepared many rakes, shears and a couple of big bags so we could...

🍂 Rake up all the leaves

✂️ Trim down the weeds in the wild area

🪵 Add the sticks to the bonfire pile

💰 Bagging up everything so it can rot down into 'brown gold' (I watched a film about soil the other day 🧐)

40 minutes later and we were all done - a good deed for the book and some nice chat and exercise too.

Nice one team 🏆