A small but mighty gang of two James', two Cats and a Hannah met at St John's Church tonight to help Karen and the Thursday Lunch Club volunteers spruce up the grounds as a thanks to the church for letting the club use its hall. Armed with loppers, rakes and wheelbarrows, the volunteers made great progress clearing back brambles and ivy to make the path to the hall more accessible and the area generally more presentable. Special shout out to newcomer James who got stuck straight in with the chopping and had to be prised from his loppers when it was time to leave!

Great work tonight gang!

You can find out more about the Thursday Lunch Club here. It's a great initiative so please do reach out to Karen if you can help with your time or donations.

It was great to return to Ripley to scrub up the windows from the inside too this time (+ some radiators and extra bits)! Brenda and Hannah set to work with the help of the warden, Cliff, and got things sparkling while discussing the benefits of Goodgym and volunteering in general. We also found out about more of the activities going on at Ripley, including coding, yoga and art clubs, and took the opportunity to pose for some shots in the elegant music room... (We did actually clean as well!)

You can check out what's on at Ripley here:

https://www.bromleyarts.com/events-manager/

A fantastic four met Sharon at Ripley Arts Centre this morning to scrub some windows clean. It’s a place with an interesting history and lots going on, including music groups, art classes, poetry and filmmaking. It was almost shut down last year so it’s good to see it’s now still going.

We devised our respective strategies for cleaning the windows and set to work, also using various tactics/ladders to reach the higher parts of the windows. The result was pretty shiny and satisfying! At the end we even had a special tour of the building, learning about the musical family that once lived here and left their marks (literally) in the brickwork…

Another fun and also informative evening at the allotment with Greener and Cleaner, Efi and friends! Tonight the group was busy planting out potted seedlings, pruning the grape vine, giving the potatoes some tasty compost, putting the stinky natural nettle-based fertiliser to use, and giving all the vegetables and herbs some much-needed water. One fig was also spotted on the tree! Various people also went home with some courgette flowers, rainbow chard, vine leaves and seeds to use. Thanks for having us!

Our Wednesday evening crew took on the Greener & Cleaner allotment, meeting the brilliant Efi to hydrate some thirsty plants, layer cardboard into the compost, and even learn how to make some nice natural (stinky) fertiliser out of nettles!

We were also lucky enough to go home with some giant rhubarb stalks, sage, mint and sunflower seeds - thanks so much! (I can confirm that these have all been put to good use, not just transformed into daggers for a quick duel…)