Report to follow.

Another day in May, another day of deciding whether to wear your shorts or your winter raincoat to your GoodGym mission. We met outside St Michael & St George’s Church in White City as the skies turned an ominous shade of grey, and thankfully vicar Ben had opened up the doors to let us in as the heavens started to open.

Most of us managed to stay dry, apart from Big Little Beth, who had decided the best place to take her important phone call was right in the middle of the pavement in the eye of the storm. We were all judging her, until she informed us it was a meeting with the baking society at uni, and all of a sudden it was okay (don’t want to risk her not bringing us any brownies ever again!).

Inside the church, Ben was explaining that our job for this session was to help sort out all the toys in the crèche. We needed to throw out any broken or unsuitable toys, and give the ones we were keeping a good old clean up. There were also a few boxes of old books and hymn sheets that needed decanting into recycling bags.

Klara (on her first GoodGym mission - welcome!) and Jess got to work on the recycling, whilst the rest of us took a box of toys each to have a sort through. There were some broken cars and bits of plastic that had perhaps belonged somewhere else once upon a time, which went into a black sack. There were also some questionable soft toys, to which we played a game of ‘keep or creep’, with the latter making the bin. Louisa seemed to enjoy this one, and the general consensus was that if it was creepy, we would not keep.

The toy tidying was disrupted for a brief interlude at this point. Jess had just found all the animals for the wooden Noah’s ark when the storm subsided and Lucy called everyone out to admire the rainbow that was arching over the church. This hiatus was an opportunity to rally the troops for a group photo outside the church, before we continued on with the toy-dy.

In the church hall, Emily, Tom and Jonny had finished their boxes, and were giving them a good old wipe through, whilst Andrew and the two Beth’s were separating brio from building blocks and stickle bricks. Once we had sorted all the toys, we needed to give them a clean up and the boxes a wipe down. Unlike the words of Destiny’s Child, I think the toys were ready for this gel-ly. We wiped down and sanitised the toys, before organising them into boxes separated by category - one for puzzles, one for the wooden train set, one for the tool kit toys and so on.

We’d managed to get everything sorted, cleaned and packed up, and the black bags were taken to the bins so that the old toys could go on to you heaven. Ben thanked us for all our hard work, and had some easy peelers as a thank you. Orange you glad you all came along for those lovely juicy fruits?

The weather had put a stopper on our other task for the evening, which would have been in the church garden, but that just means we will toy-tally have to come back next week!

On a grey and rainy Saturday, 7 GoodGymers ran/walked/cycled to Fulham Palace to help Pete, a senior gardener of the Fulham Palace Trust, tidy up a section of the garden in time for summer. We met at the usual spot by the gate to the Palace and were excited to be able to venture into the inner garden of the palace, rather than heading down into the moat (as we've done for previous gardening tasks).

Pete put us to work near the Bishop's chair, pulling out a pesky vine which had invaded the hedge and clearing weeds (both large and small) from a patch of garden. We did a very vine job, if we can say so ourselves, and were weedy careful to avoid a patch of garden in which a rare plant local to the area was growing.

A few of us discovered the wonders of using kneeling pads for weeding, although as we became more comfortable with them, they transitioned into seat pads. Pulling out weeds while seated seemed appropriate as Pete shared stories of famous gardens he's worked in or visited, and generally educated us on the work of the Fulham Palace trust gardeners.

The dreaded rain arrived towards the end of the task but fortunately we had completed the task before it set in. Thanks to Pete from Fulham Palace for hosting us. We hope to help out again soon!