Our final Big Monday Night Task of the year saw us heading back to Limehouse to help Kamal with the hub makeover.

Why were we here?

Tower Hamlets Community Transport hub is based in Limehouse. A small charity set up to provide transport to voluntary and community groups in Tower Hamlets, this venue is now also home to Ocean Youth Connexions, a local charity providing a range of youth and community activities since 2002.

Tonight we were here to help Kamal of Ocean Youth Connexions continue the makeover of the community hub, to help get it ready for a wide range of activities in the coming months.

Our task list was a well-prepared range of outdoor gardening activities including: pruning trees, curbing ivy, clearing (a lot of) leaves - and bagging and moving the lot.

Divided into multiple teams with a big variety of tools, the back yard was soon a hive of activity with Kamal regularly appearing to rotate teams out of one task and into another and offer instructions on best locations for depositing the debris.

At just after 8, as St Anne’s clock chimed 8, we started the wrap-up effort: hauling the final bags over to the circular paving ready for collection; gathering the last of the secateurs, agonising over the pun (thanks to the brilliant Pun Posse Lucinda, Ilana and Kitty as usual for tonight’s fab offering) and then finally posing for that all-important group pic.

And Kamal was in touch a short while ago to say,

“A big thank you to GoodGym: their work was brilliant last night. We’re slowly getting there in achieving a good clean.”*

What a great end to the year.

Until next time.

GoodGym has been supporting the Hollybush Estate for years, and the wonderful Margaret and Ash have transformed every bit of spare space in the area into a thriving green oasis.

On a drizzly Thursday we were continuing to shift soil from old planters which had been demolished, ready to be planted in brand spanking new ones!

Most of the team were on shovelling and wheelbarrow duty, moving the surprisingly heavy sold, from huge containers to other huge containers.

The green fingered among us (Nada and Theresa) started work on planting saplings in some of the filled bags.

After a swift 40 minutes we had emptied the last bag, before packing up the spades and heading off into the cold December afternoon.