Youth Got The Glove

Thursday evening’s good deed came courtesy of GoodGym Richmond, although it seemed to be more GoodGym Hounslow on tour and taking over, with a smattering of other West Londoners.

The task in ask was at Mortlake Youth Club; a community hub of activities and events for young people in the local area. We were met by Danielle, one of the youth workers, who gave us the rundown of the jobs for the evening. The hall doors needed a fresh lick of paint, food donations needed to be sorted and there was a general clean up and tidy to be done in the gym, the cupboards and the art room.

Masks already on, and gloves donned, the girls got going on the tidying up. Marieke and Petra had cone on to cupboard duty, and at the opposite end of the hall, Alanna, Tish, Michelle and Lucy were in the gym. We couldn’t weight to tidy up the barbells and had a ball making sure all the equipment was good(gym) to go. We even managed to fitness in a few squats and lunges...

Elsewhere, Jack and Luis had made their way to the paint station, and searched in vain for a tin of suitable white paint. This was a trickier task that anticipated, as most of the paints had separated out, and had the emulsion was no longer in motion. Tish and Michelle stepped in and using makeshift stirrers from various bits of wood, managed to salvage a magnolia, and a pale blue (‘We wondered where that went - we used that on the toilets!’ Danielle said). The only white that was salvageable was probably not the type of paint we wanted for the doors. But hey, we were on a roller and Jack took the important roll of applying the first coat... ‘Is it me, or is this blue?’ He asked, as the first lick of paint turned a pale shade of duck egg. We squinted, ‘It’ll be fine... Sure it will dry white’. Paint no point in stopping now we’ve started eh?

We split again (like the tins of Dulux), and some of us went to the former arts room, now the food donations storage area. We pen-t a bit of time tidying up the felt tips and the drawings that were scattered about, before Danielle set us a task of organising all the donations into stacking trays of similar items.

Although there was a lot of food, it was a peasible job. We got down to beans-ness; Alanna and Marieke had us organised - meaty things in one tray, the plethora of peas into another, a basket of beans and a platter of pasta. All the trays were filled, and there wasn’t mushroom left at all (in fact the tower was almost as tall as our resident giant, Luis). Off they went, a stack attack onto the slightly questionable transportation mode of a wheely board, and the donations left the arts room for the pantry.

Back in the entrance area, the guys who were on paint patrol were packing up. It didn’t look like they had made much of an impact, but Jack was convinced the paint would dry white, rather than the subtle blue sheen it was currently giving off, and not really covering the chipped bits of door! Guess we will have to see what happens, but we are always happy to come back and try painting part 2!

The tasks were completed (as much as possible), and Danielle was very peas-ed with the hard work we had done for her. While she got Henry Hoover out for a final flourish, the rest of us were ‘hanging out’ in the hall. Michelle proved to us she wasn’t the best footballer to come from Leicester, Alanna discovered a new talent for shooting hoops, and Luis learnt the rules of netball. After a quick team photo, we head off. Another good deed done. Hoop hoop hooray!