Thanks to Adam for this week's run report title...as he smashed the fifth wooden chair onto the path this evening at the INUF's Mental Health Community Garden, he commented that this was definitely one of our most physical tasks in ages - a proper GoodGym workout.

On our first visit to INUF, our welcoming host Pat outlined the tasks she wanted us to complete this evening - the first being to empty a greenhouse packed full of wooden chairs, that could then be broken up into pieces and thrown into the corner of the garden - and so as Hilary and Bea played a game of life size Jenga to get the tightly packed chairs out, Graham, Adam and Nick lined up along the pathway and formed a chair destruction chain gang - there really is nothing more satisfying than smashing things up when you've been given the green light to go right ahead - apologies to the neighbours who's quiet Tuesday evening was rudely shattered by the sound of multiple chair legs hitting concrete. Once we'd worked out the technique to break apart each chair, we raced through the queue in what felt like no time.

Onto next task - moving some furniture item out of the communal kitchen, and then task 3, which was removing a stack of sticks and branches from the garden and disposing of them on top of the wooden remains of the chairs. Adam commandeered a nearby shopping trolley, which proved ideal for shifting the broken branches and twigs, and before long we had the whole area cleared...ready for our return visit on 5th May.

Second time lucky at Ms C’s – I was pleased to hear that her power had been quickly restored after last weekend’s outage, which had rather abruptly cut short my previous visit before any actual cutting could begin.

This time, everything was fully powered up and ready to go. With her flymo back in action, I got stuck in and gave the garden a short back and sides, along with a bit of weeding to tidy things up.

An hour later, the job was done without any further interruptions, and I headed off home.

Ms C was very grateful for the support—definitely a cut above last weekend’s attempt.

It's fair to say that a lot of screwdrivers (and screws, hammer, nails, saws, shovels, brooms, string, tape, sections of wood...) were required for today's production at School21, where our friendly host Maggy had quite a bit planned for us to get done.

Fortunately we came with lots of pairs of willing hands, as Sooz, Hilary and Nick arrived from volunteering at Junior parkrun, Ambra from Redbridge, a first time GG task for Paul, and it was great to see Kevin again (once he'd worked out how to get into the school itself...).

First up was reducing the size of a woodchip area in the playground (the "easier task" per our host) - this involved shifting a row of car tyres that formed the boundary, and then shovelling/brushing the woodchip that was now outside of the tyre line back inside the play area - once done, Maggy asked us to glue some of the tyres (that weren't already cable tied together) to stop the children moving them around. Getting the "hard as nails" glue out of the tube was a workout in itself, but Kev then worked out a neat way to then ensure sufficient pressure was applied to both surfaces to get the bonding to happen...

We then moved on to the main event - "teepee building", where we discovered that certain team members seemed to have particular skills learned from times past that were extremely useful today (call Ambra if you ever find yourself needing a raft tied together in a hurry...) - as what we had was a series of broom handles, random offcuts of wood, some string, a variety of tools (of varying usefulness), some elastic bungee cords and the piece of material that would be the cover...it was up to us to come up with the construction masterplan, including deciding on the actual shape of the shelter...Scrapheap Challenge GoodGym style.

After an hour of deliberating, planning, measuring and sawing (specialist subject of Paul), tying (Ambra), frantic hammering and some quite challenging use of a screwdriver or two (there's never enough torque when you really need it), we had the frame built and it was time to put the cover over the top and tuck the edges under the pallet. We nominated Ambra to try it on for size, and it was a thumbs up all round - especially from Maggy's son who was keen to get inside and start reading...