Happy Mondays

Another good-sized group gathered at our lovely Town Hall Hotel location this evening. We stayed warm in this beautiful and welcoming environment catching up on our news, and getting ready for tonight’s task. We said hello to Benoit, our first time runner, who settled in in seconds, quickly forming part of the chatty, animated group who headed out to our steps to start tonight’s warm up.

We ran through some dynamic stretches and a few shallow squats, welcoming more runners, and working our way around the group with our regular intro (name + high point of your weekend: lots of lovely upbeat contributions this week, from Aine’s Burgess parkrun/GoodGym discovery, to Chris’s fond farewell with his nephew, and Zhara’s three-birthday-cake weekend).

It's all in the prep

And so off we headed to the Kedlestone Community Centre, where Margaret was waiting very appreciatively with one of the best-planned tasks we’d seen in a long time.

The centre needs a Spring Clean as new community users are expected and everything from chairs to loo walls just needed a bit of scrubbing TLC. Margaret had lovingly prepared pages of instructions, buckets of soapy water, gloves, aprons, masks and not forgetting the large tub of Cadbury’s Heroes.

The team set to, grabbing every last item of furniture to clean; the boys headed to the loos to tackle mould, grime and everything else you’d expect to find in a loo, while another team took the kitchen. It was go, go, go. And in true GoodGym style the teams finished waaay early, so were taken outside to commence Task 2: clearing leaves and relocating otter statues. This also paved the way (forgive the pun) for our next task at the Community Centre: clearing the greenhouse...

At 8pm, we bagged up the last of our rubbish, bid farewell to Margaret, and headed out into the chilly January night, fuelled on Heroes and goodwill.

Shout-outs

• This week, a massive hello and welcome to Benoît, who contributed a vast amount on his first outing! We can’t wait to see you again, Benoit.

• ...And to our Chris for leading the run and navigating, and to Aine for backmarking.

• And last, but goodness, no means least, a massive congratulations to Nina, who tonight hit her 100th good deed. Nina, you have no idea what you bring to the party: from, literally, Lindor on a freezing Monday night, to being the most fun addition to Girls' Night Leafleting in Shadwell. Thanks for all you bring. And congratulations.

Next week:

...It’s back to the Cemetary Park to collect the last of the logs for the Meath Gardens woodland preservation area: you snooze, you lose...

Until then.

No fewer than 21 runners congregated at Mile End Art Pavilion last night to help plant 1000 bulbs in the Bow Conservation Area, including first time runners Zahra and Cathy.

We were greeted by Task Owner John, who wasted no time at all in talking us through the evening, which started with extensive kit-collection from his house on Grove Road.

There were 26 trowels; 1000 bulbs, daffs, drills and shovels. It was quite the operation. And so we made our way to Tredegar Square to a total of five planting areas, where the team spent an hour digging tough, impacted soil and planting bulbs of all shapes and sizes.

It was fun, fast and a teeny bit freezing, but we loved every minute, not least when our Chi showed up halfway through, to take some pics and help pack up.

The team did good: John was happy; a few remaining bulbs mean we’ll be heading back to the Holy Trinity Church area in the coming weeks and we got to run the pretty mile-long route back to the Hotel to warm up.

All is good.

Bravo!

Well done to the whole team, for getting so much done, for staying late, and especially to Task Force members Stephen for fantastic run-leading and route navigation; to Emma and John for greeting and light-carrying, and to our first time runners Cathy and Zahra – what a spectacular GoodGym debut, and we hope to see you very soon.

Next week: We’re back on the Hollybush Estate to help with the big community centre clean-up!

Until then.

An unexpected return visit to the Crisis Warehouse on a warm Wednesday evening to help Crisis project managers Anna and Taidgh with the final 20% of the "stuff" still in the warehouse that needs moving from the various far reaches of the building to the main entrance in preparation for trucks to collect later this month.

Anna guided Keri, Heinrich and I to the upstairs area above the old call centre to initially move three full cages of stationary and other items down the stairs (empty cage, move all contents down the stairs, then refill same cages at ground level...) before moving into a small office to empty that of all its contents.

Taidgh armed Becky and Simon with power drills to de-whiteboard the various rooms, and gave Grit and Simon H the furniture moving shift, putting big lockers onto pallets and then getting them wrapped in the heavy duty clingfilm...everyone's favourite (slightly manic) task.

Inevitably we all then converged on helping each other with the various shifting, wrapping, rolling, caging, lugging and palleting in the area at the back of the building - when the peace was disturbed by Anna firing up the forklift to do the real heavy lifting of the pallets.

Clearly there's still more to do (this Warehouse truly is the gift that keeps on giving...), so the team coming on Friday will have their hands full, but as always the Crisis team were grateful for everyone's help...and it was still light and warm outside when we left.