That's one way to describe blood donation, I guess!

Conversation always seems to take an odd turn when we're at the ICCA. Perhaps it's all those railings frazzling our brains like the static snow on an old TV (showing my age there).

It was a night of newbies last night, with Victoria and Walter joining us for the first time and Steph Ducat joining us from Ealing for a spot of tourism – thanks for the photos!

Our Team Scrape and Team Paint strategy is still working, although we might need to bring along some new scrapers next time due to some very exuberant work! I think this will be the last time we do it in the light for this year though, so I'll get charging the headtorches! Nothing will stop us getting to the end of these railings. Except rain. Rain is bad for paint.

THINK DRY THOUGHTS THIS WINTER!

We were back at the ICCA in Sherwood to continue the Nottingham GoodGym equivalent of the Forth Bridge.

With just the two of us Nigel chose to scrape and prep for future visits whilst Peter donned the disposable gloves and painted.

Good to see a bit more progress made and, who knows, we may even finish this year (in time to start again?)

Another week, another night of chipping away at this monster of a mission!

This time, Nigel and ~Nat~ turned up early to get a head start with the scrapers, our new favourite tool as recommended by Joel last week.

Doing it this way really does seem to help speed up the painting process and I'm sure we got through more of the railings last night than we have done on any of the nights before. Although some of that might be due to painting in almost sub-zero temperatures earlier in the year… Team Scrape have prepped a good chunk ready for us to get cracking with when we come back in a couple of weeks.

Welcome to Chloe who joined us for her first task! Hopefully see you again sometime soon!

Dayna, Florence and Nigel were joined by new comers Saul and Joel for the latest session of painting the railings at the ICCA Centre. Saul shared his memories of the building from the days it was owned by Sunblest and the resulting daily aroma of freshly baked bread. He also produced a steel brush and paint scraper that improved the preparation process significantly. Definitely good learning for our future sessions at this task as we work patiently towards its conclusion.

We were back at the ICCA tonight for some more railing painting.

It started a little differently, though, with Leah and Sarah meeting up for dinner at the ICCA's Dosti Club. Fully carb-loaded on noodles, chips and rice, plus a bit of mango kulfi where Natalie got in on the action, we headed down to get painting.

Charlie welcomed first-timer Jen, and we unpacked the kit. Leah finished off a tiny bit of the fiddly double gate we didn't get to last time while everyone else got cracking on the next section. We managed to get a decent chunk done in an hour, but we're seriously considering a hack Sarah had seen where you apply the paint with socks to get more done with a swipe.

So if you're joining us for one of these sometime soon, maybe raid your sock drawer on the way!

Wooooah, we're (roughly) halfway there! Woooooooooooooah! And paint is in our haaaair!

This week we were tackling the most intricate part of the ICCA's railings so far – the double gate!

We were wondering what the letters in the middle of each gate were and I'm pleased to tell you that I found out. The building was originally a factory for Thomas Forman and Sons – apparently inspired in design by Buckingham Palace. Every day's a school day.

I'm not sure if it was the heat making it super gloopy or what, but the paint was still as unwieldy as it was back in the dark and windy nights we were here in the winter and spring, so we all came home sporting various levels of paint coverage ourselves. Rachel had to bathe her legs in white spirit to get hers off!

We also welcomed back Florence and Elspeth after some time away. Hopefully see you all again soon!