Who wanted to watch England play in the World Cup anyway?! Not us. When we set off England were 1-0 down, but on our run to the task we heard a loud roar, and Ben ducked into The Wheatsheaf to check that, yes, England had equalised.

The lovely garden at Hearing Help needed weeding, especially the lawn, which was a bit of a jungle. Rich and Jess got the tools out, and after a quick safety briefing of DON'T GO NEAR THE HEMLOCK! we started pulling up weeds.

Another loud roar soon told us that England was now 2-1 up.

Ben and Martin got straight on it, I was distracted by a low flying kestrel but eventually put my bird app away and started work.

Fay and Sallyann arrived on foot, and together we filled a big rubble bag with weeds, and left a nice patch of cleared lawn for Hearing Help to enjoy.

We had nearly finished when Andy turned up. He's settling into retirement so well he's forgotten what time it is.

When the tools were away, we watched the house martins flying round the mill, and went home to watch the highlights.

A team of 5 of us set off towards the new Hawthorns School, with an idea of where we were going, but in the knowledge that our maps may not get us to the right place. Our task was to assist with assembling tents on the school field, to provide shelter for the students in the hot summer months.

We made our best guesses and got to the right place, where we found a mix of tents that our host Louise had found locally on a social media marketplace.

Russell (best tent builder on the team) and David (best at keeping team morale up) started by helping the other assemblers, and managed to put a tent up successfully.

Jane (best at monkey bars), Ben (best tent building confidence) and myself (best at...supervising?) chose one of the other tents, and whilst we started out with a lot of enthusiasm, that waned once we realised the poles were so damaged that it wouldn't be possible. We decided it wasn't salvageable and went with the choice of Russell and David, and rallied together to build a six mesh sided tent. It was getting more ominously windy as the tent went up, but it didn't stop us.

Great work team, and lets hope the Hawthorns School have us back again!

See you all soon,

Laurie

Ten GoodGymers managed not to melt while helping look after the community garden in Broomfield. Nine of us arrived in the heat to find Jess already slaving away at our mission of moving a tonne of bark and watering the flower beds. Sallyann, Joel, Richard, Jess and Laurie were soon shovelling the wood chippings into buckets, while Andy, Rich, Leanne, Ben and Martin spread it over the ground and watered the plants. By the time we finished the smouldering mound of bark had been reduced to a mere mole hill. Well done everyone!