Miss V commented on the promptness of my arrival and said to me that only GoodGymmers actually arrive precisely on time - I took that as a badge of honour on behalf of all the volunteers who have helped her! She and I both know the routine - the packaging and bags of rubbish were already outside the door, and so it was just a case of getting them downstairs and into the respective bins.

Miss N and her sister (who's staying with her at the moment) were so very grateful for me arriving at their door today, and after I'd explained the most efficient way to get the shopping done, Miss N and her sister ran through her list like a duet, and pointed out which shops I needed to head to.

Fortunately nowhere was too far away, and it proved a pleasant and successful trip to Tesco and Aldi to get what they needed, and an equally satisfying handover of the shopping bag when I returned - cue much smiling all round.

The sun was out, Mr R was on good form, and his list was as familiar as the route to and from his local Tesco, with the addition of a bag of Red Lentils, which he wasn't sure I'd be able to find - success was on our side as I returned with a full bag of treasure in hand.

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...