Tony Foreman

Reference to the report title/pun comes from chatting with George and her time spent at The Globe theatre the night before - admittedly she watched A Midsummer Night's Dream, still Shakespeare...

Five GoodGymers met on a grey and cloudy morning with the weather just holding up. Yet, Millie (and Lou, the dog) and the Friends of Alexandra Recreation Grounds showed up in full force with the tools and the determination to get stuck in again after our last session two weeks ago.

We continued with taking out sticky weeds, normal weeds and long grass from the borders surrounding the Lodge House. Katy, who came to her first GoodGym mission in a very long time, and Linda, who hasn't been to a GoodGym mission for some time too, took on the side of the border that had more dense shrubs. George, Laura and Sam finished off the other side near the Lodge House entrance, where they were stuck with the age old question - "Is it a weed or a weedy looking plant/flower?" Always a tough question to ask!

As it started to get darker and colder and the gang were approaching the end of the session, the clouds had to break into small tears of sadness...but not for too long and often the rain is a welcome help when removing weeds from the soil.

The task ended slightly early (15 minutes or so) as many hands make light work, but there's plenty of sessions at Alexandra Recreation Grounds in the future and they are all on the GG website, so please be sure to sign up!

We're really pleased to be rejoining our friends at Alexandra Recreation Ground, helping to make the park look lovely and keep on top of new growth over the summer months.

Task Details

• Make your own way to the park
• Meet by the Lodge House (look out for volunteer leaders in hi-vis vests)
• Take direction from volunteer leaders
• Take your own gloves, water, hand gel
• Please observe social distancing

Enjoy!

Five GoodGymers woke up early(-ish) on a beautiful and bright Sunday morning to meet at Cator Park to help out Friends of Cator Park with various tasks.

Proceeding to the container unit, we got the various tools we needed for the morning. Sam was happy the buckets were going to be used again. It's the only GG task (so far) where you have to fetch for water with a bucket and strong rope.

We split the team up. Clare, Ian and Tony took care of the Rose Garden, which was in dire need of weeding and for the dry soil to be overturned.

Whereas Sam and Michelle joined the Friends of Cator Park gang to dig holes and trenches to plant fern saplings. However, upon digging about 10cms, they noticed the soil was very rocky. Yet, we persevered with any and all tools to get past the rocks and rubble to be at least a shade deep. That took almost the whole session as the last 15 minutes, the Rose Garden gang came over to help put down some bone meal and compost before planting the saplings in with the dug up soil. Finally, we watered the plants and of course, took loads of photos 😊

The Friends of Cator Park were very thankful for our help and can't wait to have us back. Look out for these sessions as there are a few booked in already!

As the wind whipped up, 14 fantastic faces smiled their way through Penge, to cover around 3km and paint the walls at Melvin Hall.

This week we welcomed a brand new GoodGym runner, Anna, who is friends with Bea (we like it when people bring their friends along!). We also said hello to Lauren, who has been along to a starter session in Lewisham, but was joining us here for the first time, welcome! Lauren is one of our 200+ runners who are taking part in the Big Half in March and we are now happy to offer places to our runners in boroughs outside the race route. There was lots of talk about this last night, with Stuart being on the verge of signing up and Stephen already diving in head first! If you do fancy trying this new race (with top cheering from me!), then sign up here and get training!

This week we were returning to Melvin Hall to continue our, as David said, Forth Bridge-like painting challenge. This means a short run down the road, so a quick warm-up and off we went. En route we were briefly joined by a small boy (appropriately dressed in red!), who skipped along with us for a moment, until his mum hollered for him to come back! Thank you to David for being our back-marker this week, keeping us together as a group. We were met by Councillor Kathy, who showed us where to find the equipment and everyone got stuck straight in. After a rather challenging start last week, with the emulsion bubbling on the surface of what looked like gloss, our intrepid team rolled on another coat, with the finish looking much better. The various pockets of activity were:

• the corridor and stairs (and then into another corridor, not wanting to stop!)
• finishing that pesky peach area, getting into the nooks and crannies in the top corners
• creating a sauna effect by cramming five people into one small office space off the hall

As I circulated, taking photos, wiping up any drips and generally getting paint all over myself, I heard snippets of conversation, with Bitcoin, liquidity, half-marathons and volunteering being covered. One treasure, offered up by Tim as he and Ian cursed that peach paint, was that the French equivalent of 'A bad workman blames his tools' is 'A good workman has good tools', something for us to keep in mind when we visit tasks! Someone who clearly follows this already is Ian, who brought along his paint stirrer from home! After weeks of looking for something long and stirry, giving the paint tubs a jiggle and resorting to using unmixed paint (oh, the horror!), we could now perform our task with the utmost professionalism, thank you Ian.

Rollers, brushes and trays washed up, we had a moment to work out who was singing the version of 'Tragedy' blaring out of my mini speaker and, yes, it was Steps. Classy.

Running back towards our start point, we continued up to Crystal Palace Park (yes, I heard those groans), where we enjoyed some hill repeats. We are surrounded by (splendid) hills here, so it's best to just go with it and embrace them. This particular hill acts as the start for Crystal Palace parkrun, so good to practice if you're a regular! Keeping our torsos tall, driving our arms and lifting our knees, the hill was embraced fully, with three strong repeats, jogging down to recover. Watching from behind, I could see great arm-drive and great determination. Good work.

As we stretched, we talked about this Sunday's 5 or 10k race in Crystal Palace Park; there are still places at the moment, so go for it and good luck to Stuart, who is taking on the 10k! Ian told us about another racing goal that is far enough away to build towards with confidence, the Beckenham Half-Marathon is in September and very local, so let's make it one of our GoodGym races shall we? Next week we will meet again at 6.45, to do some more good, sign up now and put it in your diary!