Can you do the can-can?

Tonight we headed back to practice our can-sorting, weighing and lifting skills while helping East Bristol Food Bank to sort their 200 crates of supermarket donations ahead of the Christmas period. This is always a busy time, both for the donations coming in and the amount of food being processed through the food bank, so it was all hands on deck to get as much sorted as possible.

While Matt conquered his Winter Wonderland walking badge with the accompaniment of Debbie, the rest of split into two groups. Sally led a steadier group while the rest of us went on ahead. When we arrived at East Bristol Food Bank's new premises, Andy explained the sorting process to us and set the first group to work.

We can

Between the group, they manned the scales and weighed each crate to calculate how much had been donated, then split them into grouped items to make them easy to distribute.

Meanwhile, Sally's group arrived and they got the short straw of having to go straight into their fitness session from their run. On the tiny platform of dry ground outside the food bank, the group squeezed together to create a human-Tetris of plank holds, press ups, chair sits and more. After 10 minutes of work, hopefully their thighs, core and arms had enough burn to make them feel virtuous as they switched places with the other group in a food-sorting-and-fitness relay.

(but it would be better with some tin-sel...)

In no time, the group had sorted a large amount of the crates ready for distribution and had exercised GoodGym restraint not cracking into any of the biscuits. We waved Andy goodbye and set off home in the short dry-spell we had. On return, we got treated by Zdeni, who has flown through her good deeds and hit her 50th Good Deed at the weekend. She made the most amazing pernik which I promptly ate most of. Thanks Zdeni!

Welcome to Amanda, Kevin and Jessica who joined us for their first GoodGym Bristol run tonight - it was great to have you! And thanks to Alice for this week's pun!

A humongous turn out today with over 30 of us braving the drizzle and heading over to Arnos Vale cemetery to help Hayley plant more pollinator friendly flowers for Urban Buzz. We even had our favourite GG tourist Beth join us - and without any prospect of shed smashing!

Well ... at least we thought we were heading over to Arnos Vale cemetery. On arrival a quick phone call made it apparent that my cunning scheme to over-promise on a visit to a Victorian era Necropolis was in fact an over-promise and instead we were heading for the (frankly almost as nice) Arnos court park.

Once there we split into two groups to plant daffodil bulbs and crocus bulbs with the specially designed - and unimaginatively named - bulb planters, taking care to steer clear of 'desire lines' (where peeps cut through and walk their dogs and stuff).

In 25 mins we planted literally thousands (possibly millions) of bulbs so fantastic job to everyone today!

Congratulations to Charlene for hitting 50 good deeds today! And thanks to Nick for the pun :)

A dead Alice in Wonderland, a viking and a spider accompanied us on our Community Mission this afternoon... just a normal Sunday afternoon then. Following on from the Nightingale Nightmare this morning, there was a lot of fake blood to be seen, but the locals of Bedminster were not deterred by us as we rocked up to South Street Park to help Way Out West.

Stef explained to us that the five Community Noticeboards around the park needed to be sanded and varnished ahead of the winter so the wood would survive the bad weather. Luckily, we got a sunny day to do this! We paired off to take on a noticeboard each, and happily spent half an hour sanding and varnishing. With all hands on deck, we got this Community Mission done in record time, and soon we left five gleaming noticeboards drying in the sun and ready for winter.

We had a wonderful afternoon in the sun and are looking forward to helping Way Out West again! Now does anyone know how to get fake blood off...?!