I imagine that most people are aware of the wonderful Marie Curie charity who provide care and support through terminal illness. Each year their Great Daffodil Appeal is one of their major fundraising campaigns. Of course, that’s been difficult over the last two years and so this year Marie Curie have introduced the National Day of Reflection when people will remember those they’ve lost to covid, to cancer and to every other cause, with grieving being so difficult due to lockdown restrictions.

The campaign has been going since 3rd March and finishes with the National Day of Reflection and two minutes’ silence at noon on Wednesday. Big shout out to Morrisons supermarkets for allowing Marie Curie to collect in their stores!

As the campaign heads towards its climax, Liz, Lucy, Charlotte, Seb, Sara and I played tag teams of two GoodGymers for two hours each to rattle our collection boxes, flash our best smiles and collect a few coins (and a few notes!) to boost the total. (Actually we didn’t rattle our tins as it’s not allowed, but I hope you’ll allow me the poetic license!) We were told that hats were optional but that they increase donations so it had to be done!

It was emotional at times - most people were happy to just drop their coins in the box but a few stopped to tell us stories about people they had lost and why they were donating. It costs £20 per hour of nursing care so hopefully our efforts today will make at least a small difference.

**Update: we raised an amazing £217 for Marie Curie. Well done everyone!! (Anji) **

Whisper it.. Spring is coming!

We made a huge difference today in our big Urban Green Saturday session at Iris Brickfield Park. We drifted into the session at various times today and all had a pretty good workout!

Tanya was first to arrive and was already stuck into some litterpicking before myself and Paul were shortly followed by Seb, then Tom and Sam, and later Sara. We joined a group of Urban Green volunteers and got cracking!

Our tasks today were in preparation of wild seed planting in an area of the park that used to be home to a wild flower meadow and needed some TLC! We did the following:

• Litter picking (this sadly revealed the heartbreaking sight of a severed teddy bear head- see photo for evidence)

• Raking and wheelbarrowing huge piles of grass

• Path edging

• Wild flower seed planting

Between intense raking, lifting and moving today it was a really heavy full body workout and I am already concerned for my aching arms and core tomorrow. There are signs of spring everywhere and it was exciting to do our first task without 20 layers on in quite some time.

The before and after pictures show how much we got done, giving a satisfying end to a busy morning.

Congrats to Seb on his 10th good deed today- he received the gift of long-hair-style-advice as a reward.

Hope to see you at a session very soon!