It was nice to meet Mrs D today she needed a food parcel urgently from the Food bank. I phoned her in advance to find what she urgently needed armed with this I was on my way to the food bank .I soon had her parcel and was on my way to her once there she was so grateful after a chat I was on my way knowing she would be OK.

So the rain held off for tonight's session and what a fun session it was! Runners Graeme, Daryl and Caprice met at King's Park for the group run to the task. Eleanor made her own way their with a run along the seafront, literally on the sand! We love her determination. Tonight's session was to help The Friends of Boscombe Chine Garden clean and paint their wooden hut located in the community gardens. The runners were greeted by Jane and Rosemary who had already started clearing away the overgrown bamboo and shrubs. Graeme, Daryl and Caprice got to work clearing away the dust and cobwebs. Eleanor arrived ready to start the good bit.... painting!! Starting with the front of the hut, Daryl and Eleanor tackled one side, whilst Caprice and Graeme painted the other. It's amazing how much they achieved, the GoodGymers, Jane and Rosemary successfully finished the front part of the hut, it looked amazing and the gang will return Monday 5th August to attempt another side of the cabin.

Six Goodgymmers, Graeme, Roger, Paul, Daryl, Keith and Lea, turned up at St Aldhelm’s church. Welcome to Graeme, this was his first official Goodgym task, he did one or two unofficial tasks before. It was Roger’s second official task. Always nice to get new people involved! So we got to the church to help clear the garden of weeds… lots of weeds there were, but no gardener! His name being David Jokes, we wondered: is this the joke? But Paul and Vicar to the rescue: Paul knows the church and got the vicar who then came and told us what you do and we got the tools we needed. After a while a very apologetic David arrived. He had obviously had a few more than “forty winks”! We worked for a good 90 minutes in perfect weather conditions and got lots done! Graeme learned a lot about deadheading Sissi…eh what?! He learned to deadhead them but not their proper name… just goes to show you don’t need to be able to name the plant to deadhead it. Which also goes for weeding… but you do need to know whether something is a weed or not… oops we may have pulled out a few plants rather than weeds😱🤣! Anyway gardens being gardens: there’s plenty more to do, so keep your eye for new dates! Thanks everyone for doing another Goodgym deed!

Four Goodgymmers, Caprice, Eleanor, Keith and Lea, turned up at TOSH again for our last session before the grand opening on Sunday. In Dutch they say: “de laatste loodjes” (literal translation “the last bits of lead”) in English “on the home stretch”. Yes, again bits and bits to be done: Keith putting up rope wires, Caprice and Eleanor clearing brambles from a wall, Lea cutting weeds away on a to-be kiddie trail, more weeding, filling in holes and even more bits…. it’s all looking really lovely! Doesn’t it feel good to know we played our part in getting to this stage. Thanks to everyone who joined in at some point! Hopefully some of us will be able to attend the grand opening this Sunday between 2 and 4. Cake and tea for everyone.

Four Goodgymmers, Roger, Chloe, Caprice and Lea, turned up for another day at TOSH. It was Roger’s first official deed with us. He has joined us unofficially on a few previous occasions, but he certainly looked the part today in his new tshirt. Mind you, Roger, it’s not a proper Goodgym shirt if it hasn’t got stains on it… well, according to Lea! (You can guess the state of her shirt!) Anyway, all in bits today. As it is one of the last sessions before the grand opening of the garden on Saturday 20-7, a lot of “bits” needed to be done. There was Roger taking away the bricks lying all over the garden, Caprice, in spite of an injured finger, happily sweeping the paths, Lea pulling off the sticky tape from the grouted tiles and Chloe cleaning the bits of grout from the tiles, joined later by Lea. Chloe then cut long grasses away from around the entrance. Roger got ace at stringing wire between posts. Lea and Roger carried big unused slabs from the garden area to a van. And Caprice aced the jigsaw puzzle of getting all the tools back into the tiny shed. All in all… lots of bits done, so lots of things ticked off Melinda’s list. Tuesday is our final session there, more bits to be done to tick off on the list. And then the grand opening on Saturday, with a party to which all the Goodgymmers are invited!!

Three Goodgymmers, Daryl, Keith and Lea, turned up at Tosh to help finish off the circle tiling in the community garden. Taping off the tile of various sizes with varying reliefs was a rather tedious job. But… once the ingenious system thought up by Lea was in place, that sticky job was done in about half an hour! Mind you Keith and Daryl were working at a breathless pace to keep up with her. Then came the even stickier, gooey-er job of piping the grouting and of smoothing the grouting in between the tiles. A messy job, but with a clean looking tiled wall at the end, well, we hope so. We won’t see the end result till everything is dry! And the nicest tile among all the beautifully grafted tiles??? The Goodgym tile, of course!