Cranbrook community centre is a lovely space, offering a hall for community-based events and private hire and also a food garden. This weekend, they were participating in both Open Garden squares weekend and the Big Lunch, and were looking for some help to tidy up their garden in advance of this.

And so seven GoodGymmers met up this afternoon to help Cranbrook community centre clear up their garden.

As nominally in charge, Liz took the details of the first task from our contact, Janet. In essence, this was to throw away some fence panels (without being as gung-ho about it as the wind wanted us to be) and to bundle some sticks together. This did not take long to do, and we soon looking askance at Janet for more to do (probably in much the same way that a dog looks at you when you're eating a bacon sandwich. Or cheese).

Thankfully, Janet's need for clean wasn't yet satiated. For task number two, we moved onto an immediately adjacent area (comprising more sticks, but, also, some pots!) with instructions to bring order to the universe. This is when everyone started to come into their own, making useful suggestions about the best way to go about it in a constructive and collaborative way that allowed Liz to simply take photos and give a health and safety briefing ("Please don't get hurt: I have no qualifications to help if you do").

This sort of Kings (or Queens?) was mucho fun and we learned lots! For example, we learnt to avoid water (both standing water from pots to be discarded and hose water from, well, a hose), how to tie sticks together (show them some affection by hugging them), and which GoodGymmers to avoid if you've been irreversibly transformed into a snail (most of them, tbh).

Part way through the big sort, Assiya and Jess were siphoned off to put up posters/deliver leaflets, while the rest of the group finished up sorting.

Tasks completed within a super speedy 45/50 minutes, and separate photos of Team Clean and Team Leaflet taken by Janet, we made our goodbyes and took some Oreos for the road (Jess was also gifted some lovely rhubarb from the food garden, which she plans to be traditional with by seasoning with custard).

Lovely meeting you all and hopefully you can join in Cranbrook Community centre's Big Lunch tomorrow! 😄