It was one of those glorious late autumn mornings when the sun shone but the ground was frosty this morning.

A gaggle of Goodgymers gathered at Denny Gardens for another session with Meg and her volunteers.

This time we dug over community plot one, hoiked out any stray roots, removed litter all whilst putting the world to rights.

Congratulations to Vicky on her 350th Good Deed.

An excellent way to start the weekend.

This evening 10 of us gathered at the lovely warm Manor Hospital to brush up on our basic life saving skills.

A few of us have attended this course before but it is always good to have a refresher or learn new skills. You never know when you might need them.

Led by the wonderful Elaine and Nikki we learnt how to tell the difference between a heart attack and a cardiac arrest, how to administer CPR and rescue breaths and how to use a defibrillator.

A few takeaways:

• Of you find a collapsed person who is breathing normally put them in the recovery position (on their left side is best) and call 999.
• If there is no sign of breathing thats when rescue breaths and CPR should be used.
• Drs ABC should be followed (see below)
• If the person has been drowning or choking start with 5 good rescue breaths to get oxygen back into the body.
• A good CPR protocol is 30 compressions to 2 rescue breaths and try to minimise time off the chest.

D - check for danger R - is the person responsive to voice or stimulus S - shout for help (check for bleeding) A - check the airway B - do rescue breaths C - Compressions

Apps: what3words - you can give the exact location to the ambulance AED map - an app for searching defib locations.

Websites:

Defib finder The Circuit

Thank you everyone for coming. I hope that we never need to use the skills that we've learnt today but we have them, just in case.