A small but perfectly formed team of two set out for GoodGym Westminster last night, braving a properly blustery evening that kept us on our toes all the way to the garden.

On arrival, we discovered that most of the space had recently been weeded, but one lonely bed had been left waiting patiently for our attention.

We stuck in straight away, chatting all things green as we worked. Luckily, we had Lyndsey on hand—armed with expert horticultural knowledge and an impressively green background—who knew exactly what needed to come out and what deserved to stay.

A little bit of focused effort went a long way, and by the end of the session the bed was transformed. The garden is now in great shape and ready for planting—something we’re hoping to get stuck into next time.

Speaking of next time, we’ll be heading to the lovely Abbey Centre next week, a real lifeline for local people in need of extra support. It promises to be another rewarding evening—hopefully with slightly less wind!

I'll admit that the correct use of (if any) punctuation isn't an essential ingredient of the average shopping list, until it is - on today's Mr R list he'd written Bananas Cheese...so I just had to check...

My geography of northwest London clearly failed me this afternoon, when the friendly Mrs N handed me her very neatly written list and I asked which shop to aim for. There's a Tesco on Clifton Road she said, just a short walk away. A quick check of the map to make sure I was heading in the right direction and off I wandered...only to find myself in a very familiar Tesco that I occasionally shop in for another beneficiary in the area, but just approach it from a completely different direction...

Mrs S was absolutely insistent this morning that I was to only get her English tomatoes, which then got us into a whole conversation about food miles and how far a tomato really needs to travel to reach the shelves of Waitrose (and other supermarkets...). Not entirely to my surprise, all the tomatoes on the shelves were either from Morocco, Spain, Turkey or the Netherlands - too early in the season perhaps, or all that February rain has turned them into puree...

A lively group met this evening at Charing Cross to serve hot food to people in the streets.

While waiting for the van of food, I met Chandrima, and while chatting about GoodGym we found Dom who has been getting the emails for a while, but hasn't signed up to a session! So congratulations Dom, this counts, we hope to see you at more GoodGym events soon (you don't even have to run every time!)

Once the van arrived we quickly set up and were soon serving biriyani, pasta salad, bread, gulab jamun and socks to whoever needed it.

There was an abundance of food this evening, and so noone went away hungry. Jas the driver was even able to drop some leftovers back at a nearby hostel.

It was a balmy evening with pleasant company - I for one will be back again.

Except bunches of Sainsbury's bananas which come in fives - so Miss P got one extra for her money - otherwise it proved to be a straightforward task to find the four items on her list this week, and as always she was extremely grateful for the help.