Angela Mynott

What a perfect evening for Goodgym, cold but crisp and still and although a bit cloudy the light of a full moon added to the atmosphere. And it was great to welcome back Abi, Davidand Tabithawho have all missed the past few months due to dodgy knees, backs and hearts!

Our task was to help Stuart from the Palmeira & Adelaide Garden Fund group keep on top of all the work that needs doing in these lovely and well used squares. Council cuts means that there just isn’t the people power to do all the work, and groups like this really make a huge difference in keeping our open spaces tidy.

Our efforts tonight focussed on the northern most part of the square (oval?!) around the floral clock I discovered that the clock was installed to mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II so it’s not surprising that it no longer works!

We scraped all the grass that had spread from the side it should be to the side it shouldn’t, sweeping followed scraping, shovelling and bagging followed sweeping and in about 45 minutes the job was done. Lots of passers by thanked us for our efforts, it’s always good to know that we are appreciated.

A quick fitness session of lunge variations followed before we went our separate ways into the night.

It was a long weigh to go to our task tonight, 3km in each direction to get to St George's Hall in Moulsecomb to meet up with Cllr Kate Knight who helps run a Social Supermarket from the hall.

First a warm welcome to Mel joining us for the first time. It was great to chat about your very interesting job (enhancing the health of rivers) and great to have you along!

The weather was great for running, no wind and a cooling drizzle but not so great for outdoor weeding so Cllr Kate redeployed us to the inside of the hall to help get organised for the social supermarket which happens on Wednesdays. This is a great scheme where members pay £3.50 per week to shop from a bank of donated food and goods. Tasks tonight included breaking down bulk packeted goods into smaller parcels, for example weighing large 10kg bags of rice into 1kg bags, counting teabags and nappies into smaller parcels. There was a also a box of donated greetings cards to be sorted, a large pile of cardboard boxes to be broken up for recycling and some large rubbish bins to be painted to identify as belonging to the hall.

We got all the jobs done in about 20 minutes and headed back into the night for the 3km run back to base, although a significant part of the group decided the best weigh to go was to get the bus!!

Another year, another night of ferrying festive firs to their final resting places. Winter pulled out all her tricks - newly freezing temperatures and treacherous wet leaves (hope your knee isn't too bad Rachael) but of course, GoodGym prevailed. Welcome to Rosie andCarla

Meeting at Hove Peace Statue, we split into teams, each covering a section of lovely Hove. Everyone sped off in different directions, armed with Tara's intel on the best areas to find the abandoned trees (including a suspiciously close former collection point that particularly benefited one prolific team).

Some dragged and some hauled their hard-won booty to the collection point, and in the end about 50 trees were added to the pile. We finished with a brisk seafront AMRAP session won by a super keen Jay Overall, a great start to the year!

Twas the last one before Christmas and all was not well! With a number of dropouts due to covid and illness our numbers were depleted but the lure of a Christmas party still drew 10 hardy souls to our last task of the year!

It was a two for one task with an indoor and an outdoor task, needless to say the indoor task was more popular. So most of the group headed off to the Real Junk Food Project to get the kitchen clean for Christmas!

We vacuumed, wiped, scrubbed and mopped the kitchen and cafe areas and task owner Emma was very grateful for our efforts to help keep this excellent project spick and span.

The other (braver) group headed off to the delightful back streets of Elm Grove to paint over some graffiti to get the town ready for the party season. But rather than painting the town red it was a mixture of grey, white and magnolia! We made light work of a number of walls despite a very stubborn old paint tin taking a while to crack. We then joined back up with the main group for the fitness.

Although I say the main group, the temptation of the pub had proved too much for many so only five us braved the drizzle to do a couple of laps of the Christmas market before heading off to the party! We lost a few more to Covid concerns and all agreed a bumper summer party might be the best approach in the New Year.

So that was the last task of the year, it has been another strange one but it has been wonderful to get back to Goodgym and see everyone again. All that is left to say is Merry Christmas and a Happy (hopefully better) New Year!