Oh what a night!

15 of us all dressed in our best ready to party the night away at the returning Slough CVS Awards Nights.

We had been shortlisted under Group of the Year award category and although I knew we had a good chance we were up against some great competition (some of whom were our task owners!).

The night started as all good nights do, with a dressed up crowd sipping on gin n’ juice with a chocolate fountain. Though the late arrivals (Nisha, Ricky and I) missed the chocolate fountain!

As we entered the lobby area we bumped into our ever so glamorous team members Jean, Ruth and Agni. Wow! Did you see how amazing Jean looked!!

After having our 1st photo taken (1st out of around 100!) we made our way into the function hall to see the rest of the gang at our tables.

Each and everyone looked amazing!

Slough CVS team opened the event with key note speakers and a warm up act from Ramesh, CEO!

And dinner is served… a delicious medley of South Asian food and a tray of fish..

We nearly won on the raffle! 170 is close to 180 right? But not close enough.

Then onto the dancing act from Creative Academy!

Dr Jim and Dom were an amazing double act on stage presenting the ceremony. A few drinks were consumed by now so can’t tell you how funny they were but I know I laughed (a lot!)

First up were the Business Impact Awards followed by our much awaited Volunteer of the Year Award. We had our very own Sutyee shortlisted for this category for all that she does to support junior parkrun.

Drum roll please……

The award goes to…. Cindy! Well done Cindy…

The highly commended award goes to SUTYEE!!! Wohooo! Applause please as she stands to receive her certificate

Next onto Public Sector Partnership Award

Now the one we were waiting for - Group of the year

First up is a short film on each group nominated. As always, each time GoodGym is mentioned there are cheers all round. Pipe down GoodGym!

And I am delighted to tell you that we received awards in 2 categories

Highly Commended for Making a difference to the environment

Winners of Designing innovative projects!

Even more applause 👏

What a night. It ended with a disco that had everyone up and dancing

We had such a great time! Uber Ricky dropped us home and somehow 'stole' the award which left me in a panic thinking i'd lost it! Luckily the thief returned in the morning with award intact!

Enjoy the photos.. we certainly enjoyed the night

This evening we were on our first task of helping Slough Outreach with their new Charity Shop come Community Hub in Cippenham.

This unit will be used to support the community as a place to meet, donate items for resale and items for the Outreach work that Shin and his team do.

Our task was to give the shop a clean up - many hands make light work... and that clearly showed this evening as we blitzed through the task in 45 minutes.

Prior to Shin arriving we went for a little jog around the block lead by our very own Jen...

On Shin's arrival we quickly made our way inside the warmth of the shop and got the dusters out to give the shelves a new lease of life.

• Jen, Agnija and Jean went straight onto window duty - it looked pane-ful but they did a smashing job;

• Mehdi was on mirror duty - he gave himself a great reflection;

• Hamid and Ruth were quick with those dusters but cleaning feels like a never-ending marathon, it’s a real dust-ance challenge;

• Peter had made a new best mate with Henry! They were like shake n' vac putting the goodness back.

Sorry, I’m a bit dusty when it comes to coming up with puns, so I'll stop there.

To summarise, it was great to have the opportunity to help Shin with this new community hub. It's going to be a great asset to the local community and we look forward to helping out as much as we can.

Ps - I think I found my new shoes for the Awards Ceremony next week!

Twas the night before Halloween and the good people of GhoulGym Slough were out and ready to give the town a Hallo-Clean at Salt Hill Park

We met at the Salt Hill Activity Centre and after a little photo shoot with Mike we descended into the deep dark depths of the park.

With no running for me tonight (legs are like the living dead after the Dublin marathon yesterday!), I sent the team out for a lap of the park - walk it, run it, jog it… just don’t get totally ghosted with your efforts!

Back from their fitness efforts we stuck to each other like glue and worked as a team to clear a section of the park.

With plenty of dirty hidden treasures in the bushes we had enough to keep us occupied. But when Hamid found what looked like a dumped rucksack with clothes and then we found rope and sheets we decided the witching hour was upon us and time to move on to another part of the park.

Although we had some great masks and accessories tonight, the best dressed award had to go to Sandy - we loved her outfit - she got it at the new boo-tique in Slough- Give em pumpkin to talk about!

With 6 full bags of rubbish collected it was time to call it a night! Everyone was thanked for their efforts and offered a ‘hero’ chocolate - bone appetite!

Witching you all a happy halloween

There was collecting piles of plastic in local park in blocked streem. So I cleaun up littlw bit and tryied to abloked streem .

We certainly delivered tonight with 7 goodgymers at Parvaaz.

Met at Salt Hill with a few meeting at the task location, our task was sweeping up the leaves in the garden and car park area. Eva got straight to work sweeping us off our feet with her wonderful trips to Portugal. Eva the garden looks amazing.

Kam and Pam covered the alley way entrance weeding and clearing up the leaves, Agnieska helped to sweep one side of the car park whilst Mehdi and Hamid covered the other side.

Total of 12 bags WOW.

Eva kindly brought some treats for us all too.

Next week session we are back at St Mary's for more painting. https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/fence-painting-03904176-9b0b-4e31-9a2f-3ce8a9cf68bd

We look forward to seeing you all at our next task.

Tonight's task was to help St Mary's primary school with a fence painting task and leaf sweep of their reception playground area.

And as soon as we saw the fence we knew we were going to have a gate-ole time! With 5 colours to paint, it made sense to have 5 team members on this task with the remaining team on the sweeping task.

I could see how eager Hamid was to get stuck in! He even took his shoes off so they wouldn't get dirty! Top man for thinking of that (I was on sweeping duty but still managed to get paint on my trainers!).

Why did the fence go to art school? It wanted to brush up on it's picket skills!

So in order of fence panels we had:-

• Pam painting a blue-tiful shade of blue;

• Jean was caught red handed with her strawberry red shade;

• Mehdi was climbing to the sun in his yellow-vator;

• Peter hoped that there would be no purple rain tonight;

• Hamid was green with envy looking at everyone else's painting skills

Well done to Team Rainbow for doing such a great job

Meanwhile, in the naughty corner we had Chrissy; Sutyee; Agnija and me doing an un-be-leaf-ably good job of sweeping all the fallen leaves into mini piles and then bagging them! There was deffo no gossiping going on - just pure hard work! Team Sweep did good!

Next week we are at the allotments for our penultimate task before the dark nights start at 6:30! (That time is coming soon!)

It's bin a while since we last visited our friends at Slough Refugee Support but as always, it was lovely to see Keriann.

Our task this evening was to give the entrance area a big tidy up by removing moss, cutting back hedges, pruning rose bushes, pulling out weeds and planting pansies.

We met at Salt hill activity centre at 6.30pm and took a nice 1 km walk around the park to the task venue where Keriann was ready and waiting for us. With a quick task overview we were ready to get going.

It was great to have Hamid back on his second task with us. Hamid is so speedy with the shears that we likened him to a hamster.....beavering away at the hedge, we literally couldn't clear the ground quick enough.

Jean was all over the rose bushes and even found the one we donated a while back for the memory garden. Mehdi helped Jean cut back our rose bush to it could grow and then cut back the hedge that was a thorn in the side of the rose bush as it was stopping the light from getting to the plants. They definitely rose to the occasion

Peter was on a number of duties today as he always is. Pruning the other rose bush, turning over the soil, sweeping, collecting and disposing the debris. Peter even very kindly agreed to give the children's garden picnic bench a makeover. We look forward to seeing the end result soon.

Jen and Kam didn't moss around as they systematically scrapped the floor and disposed of it.

Pam and Abdulaziz concentrated on the main entrance walkway, clearing the weeds and mainly tidying up after Hamid.

Agnija arrived in time to clear the remaining patch in the memory garden.

Following all health and safety protocols we even had a few trashy moments..

All in all, with a lot of members tonight, we cleared the area in a really good time.

Keriann advised us of the AGM for Slough Refugee Support and invited us all to come along. I did a presentation last year at this AGM and really enjoyed meeting all those involved in such a valuable service in Slough. The AGM will be on Friday 25th August 10am - 12pm at 29 Church Street (Slough CVS meeting room). Everyone is welcome.

Mehdi, who I first met at Slough Refugee Support English class said at the end

SRS is like my family. They have supported me since I arrived here 7 months ago.

And tonight, Mehdi helped his SRS family with his GoodGym family.