Partners in grime

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.