GoodGym Nottingham returned to the Bridgeway Hall this week. Usually we are working in the foodbank, but as the clocks have changed and the weather (apparently) more favourable, our task for this time was to help with some tidying in the garden area in preparation for the summer months.

As we all made our way to the task, we were subject to dark skies, rain and hail stones. Thankfully, by the time we arrived the sun was shining again as we met our host, Dave, who showed us what he wanted us to do.

Unfortunately, someone else had gone home with the key to the shed meaning we had limited tools and gardening gloves, but we made the best of what we had and most of the group – Khiltee, Nat, Leah, Lindsey, Peter and Rachel - spent the hour tackling the weeds in and between the raised beds.

Meanwhile, Dayna turned her attention to trimming the branches that were poking through the fence at the back of the yard, and Matt and Nigel put in some hard graft splitting up some wooden pallets, preserving as much of the wood as possible which will be repurposed as benches for the front of the food bank.

After an hour of physical work and, as usual, meaningful conversation covering running, modern languages, how to hoe and what a bat would look like in a bowler hat, we packed up and went on our merry way.

We wished a belated happy 50th GoodGym task to Matt who was already proudly wearing his black t-shirt. Also, a big shout out to Peter who is running the Manchester Marathon this coming weekend – good luck Peter!!

it was a return visit to the Carrington Community Garden last night in, would you believe, daylight! The council parks team had made a start earlier that day but there was still plenty to do
Guided by councillor Nayab (thank you for the snacks!) and Mark (ably assisted by Jack the dog) Nigel, Natalie, Florence and Peter were trying to detangle ivy from a tree. Elsewhere, Matt (now just one away from the coveted black shirt!) spent the evening attacking brambles (apart from when his extra height and agility were required!). So good to be back outdoors with no torches - here's to a long summer of GoodGym tasks

Despite the violent swings between rain and hail earlier today, somehow it wasn't Wet Wet Wet when we got to the ICCA this week. It was Cold Cold Cold though.

We picked up the kit from our hosts and headed outside to carry on where we left off a few weeks ago.

This time we gave the railings a good rub down with some sandpaper to get rid of the worst of the flaking paint before forging forward along the railings.

The light aaaalmost lasted the whole of the task, and one passerby did offer us the flash from his phone towards the end.

Fingers a little frozen, we headed inside to warm up, and got a lovely serenade from Matt on his otamatone during photo time.

We teamed up with the Nottingham Clean Champions as part of the Great British Spring Clean.

Armed with a new set of litter pickers provided by the Council team, we split up and covered quite a big area following the side streets off Hucknall Road.

Matt was, as always, highly committed to getting every last piece of rubbish (check out the pics) and I think gets to claim victory in the "weirdest find" competition for the bra and some, err, questionable-looking spray cans. Hopefully Volume 2 of the mix CD we found was better received than Volume 1 presumably was.

Welcome to Shauna and Annie who joined us for their first tasks!

A rare Friday evening task saw Matt, Rachel and new GoodGymer, Mohamad, head to the Greenway Centre in Sneinton.

The centre is the new home of IMPACD CIC a fantastic community organisation which works to reduce isolation and improve wellbeing through inclusive creative activity. This includes dance, drumming, mosaic art and photography classes for all ages.

We met Amanda on arrival who filled us in on the plans and immediate priorities. The property used to be a boxing club so their team had already made a huge transformation, but it faced a few on-going challenges including a water leak from the storm the previous night.

Due to the flooding, we couldn't help with laying the new floor which was originally planned, so instead we spent the first hour in the courtyard area at the back of the centre, clearing and sweeping up rubble and moving it to the bin out the front.

Next, Matt, Mohamad and one of the centre's students, Alex, set upon dismantling a wooden awning structure that had seen better days. It was thought that this may be contributing to the water getting into the building. Meanwhile, Rachel removed a bunch if stinging nettles from around the yard. The longterm plan is to turn the yard into a sensory play area and we hope to be able to help more with this going forward.

As the light began to fade, and after a brief coffee/tea break, the team spent the rest of the time scraping some of the loose paint from the shutters at the front of the building. They were due to be painted by a graffiti artist in the coming days and we look forward to seeing the finished result!

It was great to meet Amanda (and her two very cute sausage dogs!) and to find out more about IMPACD CIC. We hope to book in another date soon to help them continue the big renovation project.

Welcome to Mohamad who joined for his first GoodGym task.

Did you hear the story of the bearded man who turned water into wine? Well, GoodGym Nottingham witnessed a similar miracle last night when our own bearded man, Matt, managed to turn black paint into white before our very eyes!

We were back at the Sherwood Community Centre with host, Louise, who always has a range of fun jobs for us to tackle. Some of us cracked on with painting the downstairs area, including painting over the very Easter-y yellow toilets and stairwell. Meanwhile, a few others popped off to move some chairs up to the art studio before playing paint Tetris putting tins of paint away in the cupboards up there. Once Tetris was complete, they joined the rest downstairs for painting.

Later in the hour, Matt and Nat also nipped back upstairs to help manoeuvre a cupboard which had been installed the wrong way around.

Now for the miracle…

On assessing the available white paint at the start of the evening, most of the group had written off a tub of bluey-black looking paint as unusable. But Matt, convinced the paint could still be saved, set about stirring and shaking it with great determination. Bit by bit the colour changed, and to everyone’s surprise, we had white paint again.

Not quite a miracle, but definitely a reminder that we still have a lot to learn about paint… and that Matt is not the sort of person who takes “no” for an answer.

Well done to this week’s volunteers: Leah, Nigel, Nat, Matt, Khiltee, Louise, Charlie and Rachel. Also, well done and welcome to new GoodGymers Willow and Sophie - we hope to see you again soon!