Of course Mr T backed today's winner at the Gold Cup, and of course I'd taken his previous sage advice which was not to bet on the Gold Cup as it was a "bookies race" - to be fair he wasn't wrong on the latter, as the winner's odds were 11/4, but am guessing wily Mr T got better odds than that...the good thing was there were chicken steaks on his shopping list today, so I do hope he's celebrating in style as I write this.

12 GoodGymers made a difference at the penultimate winter shelter of the season!

We were super fortunate to welcome three lovely new faces this week — a big welcome to Emma, Joe, and Jonny!

And they joined our friendly and fabulous group of Al, Charlie, Emily, Jackie, Jacqui, John, Paul, and Philippa!

Across 35 well-spent minutes, this troupe:

❤️ Assembled, positioned, and dressed 14 beds ready and waiting for the evening's guests

❤️ Set 22 spaces for a (delicious-smelling) volunteer-cooked dinner

❤️ Did everything while connecting and chatting aplenty :)

Thank you, everyone!

Visiting Ms F on a Wednesday night after work, Sevan and Kash smoothly transitioned from a grocery delivery service crew into luggage carriers, ready to transport the lady's treasure chest (yet another sign that she was a pirate) from the top floor down to the basement. Sevan had already done the warm up, carrying six large water bottles upstairs!

The (in)famous, old lift in the building was too small to fit the trunk inside, even if the chest was to go down on its own, so the GoodGymers had to descend six storeys with the oversized box using the stairs. The trunk, containing Ms F's winter outfits, was more clunky to hold than heavy, but wasn't even close to posing a real challenge for the seasoned GoodGymers.

After dropping the chest at the basement, Sevan, Kash and Ms F went back to the fifth floor (Kash for the third time by stairs) to enjoy some water after work.

It's wonderful. There's so much space now! - Ms F exclaimed.

What an impactful night for Ms F it has been!

For the first part of Kash and Sevan's mission double header for Ms F was to buy groceries from the local Waitrose before Ms F's favourite cheese sold out for the day. Helping Ms F was a regular, recent mission for Kash while for Sevan, he was last there 18 months ago or more.

The pair split the shopping list based on their specialisms to speed things up. Sevan looked for veggies and fruit while Kash shopped for proteins. The last thing to pick up was the heaviest, the weekly 6 bottles of Buxton water. This time, there were no multipacks on the shelves, so 6 individual bottles were organised into their 2 baskets.

At the cashier, the conveyor belt was playing up. It only had 2 modes, off or fast-and-non-stop. The latter fired the bottles, jars, cartons and packets towards the cashier causing a pile up. She stayed calm and even tried to help the GoodGymers find a cheaper multipack of water. Five minutes later and with the help of 2 other colleagues, a 6 pack was unloaded from a cage... and it didn't scan at the till. It was labelled as "to be sold as singles only" 🤦.

Ms F's groceries were bagged up, including the original single water bottles.

"Did you pack the milk?" - Sevan
"I think so" - Kash

...but it wasn't packed. You can play spot the bottle in the photos as Sevan did in real life. In the conveyor chaos, it had hidden itself behind the till's screen. It was found and went into the carrier bags too, leaving the pair grateful that they'd forget milk not.

A return visit to help Ms V with her rubbish bags - I knew the routine this time, so it was just a case of getting the 6+ bags, plus a box, plus some food waste bags, into the lift in as few journeys as possible, and then doing the same on the ground floor to get them to the bin area and disposing the right items in the appropriately coloured bin.

Not long after I arrived at Mr T's and we'd had our chat about the week, he got up from his chair, went to a shelf under his TV and produced one of those old style reel tape measures (last seen by me at a school athletics day). Only as he went to one end of his living room and gave me the other end to walk to the other wall did I understand he was keen to measure the dimensions of his living room carpet - once he's got some new curtains (work still in progress...), then I think the carpet may be next on his to do list.

Fortunately his food shopping list proved far more straightforward, didn't involve any bending down or shouting out numbers (in both imperial and metric...), and only required a visit to nearby Tesco and Lidl - helpful as it was pouring down outside, and I hadn't come prepared for the rain...and I was soon back (a little damper) with his trolley full of treasure for another week.