We turned up at Hope House tonight and found it deserted! Peter had forgotten we were coming round, but after some phone communication we managed to arrange for him to hastily pick up Jack and meet us at Hope House as soon as he could manage. In the mean time we received instructions to let ourselves in with the stashed key and start making up double cheese sandwiches.

By the time Peter and Jack arrived, 5 rounds of sandwiches had been made, bagged up and labeled with the date and contents.

Shelve that idea!

The next task of the evening required a team effort. We were to construct a slightly misshapen metal shelving unit that had been donated to BCDP for storing boxes of clothes on. This involved two people holding the end pieces up while a third slotted in and hammered home the long beams. As ever with reassembling metal furniture some brute force was required to make things slot into place correctly. 'Insert tab A into slot B' turned out more like 'Try to bend Tab A into Slot B; when this doesn't work, hammer Tab A until it bends into Slot B, then squeeze it into Slot C with pliers and hope it doesn't fall apart!'. A team effort, in which only one person almost got built into the structure, enabled the finished item to come to fruition. The new furniture was immediately pushed into service; we filled plastic boxes with donated clothes, sorted according to type/ size and labeled as such, then placed the boxes in size order on the shelves of the new unit. This new storage will make finding the correct items of clothing needed for specific clients a lot easier. The sorting and storage of new donations by volunteers will also be more efficient.

With the sandwiches made and new shelving unit erected and stocked, we aided with the filling of backpacks to be taken out onto the streets for the homeless then walked out into the town with them before going our own way for some exploratory fitness activities! This week we headed up to the crags at the top of Burton Bank Rd, partly to scout out future litterpicking locations, partly for some woodland themed fitness (and also to check out some climbing opportunities for our unofficial GG Barnsley bouldering group). We found some suitable branches on trees which could be hung from and proceeded to dead hang from them for as long as possible, aiming for 1 minute. 1 minute was achieved with only a little bit of a struggle and we were rewarded on the way out of the area with a sighting of at least 50 wild rabbits!

With the light fading and a spot of rain starting to descend on us, we started our trot back to base. On the way we assisted a couple of girls with safely retrieving a cat from a busy main road that had been struck by a car. After this we continued the slow uphill journey back to Glasshouse where we stretched off. Good job GoodGym!