Four Goodgymmers, Roger, Chloe, Caprice and Lea, turned up for another day at TOSH. It was Roger’s first official deed with us. He has joined us unofficially on a few previous occasions, but he certainly looked the part today in his new tshirt. Mind you, Roger, it’s not a proper Goodgym shirt if it hasn’t got stains on it… well, according to Lea! (You can guess the state of her shirt!) Anyway, all in bits today. As it is one of the last sessions before the grand opening of the garden on Saturday 20-7, a lot of “bits” needed to be done. There was Roger taking away the bricks lying all over the garden, Caprice, in spite of an injured finger, happily sweeping the paths, Lea pulling off the sticky tape from the grouted tiles and Chloe cleaning the bits of grout from the tiles, joined later by Lea. Chloe then cut long grasses away from around the entrance. Roger got ace at stringing wire between posts. Lea and Roger carried big unused slabs from the garden area to a van. And Caprice aced the jigsaw puzzle of getting all the tools back into the tiny shed. All in all… lots of bits done, so lots of things ticked off Melinda’s list. Tuesday is our final session there, more bits to be done to tick off on the list. And then the grand opening on Saturday, with a party to which all the Goodgymmers are invited!!

So tonight's session was a little bit different to our usual quiz. The GoodGymers were expecting to just meet the residents for a 'social' but on arrival, the residents were keen to have a quiz. So much so, that one of the residents came prepared with some paper, a pen and an old Mastermind quiz that she had found in newspaper which she was saving for a rainy day. Perfect! (and it was raining, literally!) Everyone moved into the lounge where Daryl and Janet got to making everyone a cuppa. Even the biscuit tin got cracked open! After a bit of a natter the room split into two teams, Caprice, Keith and Janet joining Team A and Chloe joining forces with the ladies (and Brian) Daryl being the good sport that he is nominated himself as Quizmaster, carefully choosing appropriate questions from the bumper newspaper quiz. There were some pretty tricky questions this month but both teams did incredibly well. The ladies team scoring 9/20 but the winners this month were Team A scoring a decent 13/20. Well done to Daryl for his efforts and thanks to Abbeyfield for welcoming us. We really do love our visits and it's clear to see that we were missed last month. Due to popular demand it looks as though we will be back in one month. We hope to see you there!

Six Goodgymmers, Daryl, Janet, Chloe, James, Keith and Lea, all got up early on this very sunny Bank Holiday Saturday to join the Parks Foundation team in Pelhams Park. The task today: putting raised beds together and filling them with soil for the community to use for growing vegetables. Keith got his drill out and started drilling holes where James had carefully measured and marked the solid oak beams. Daryl was busy with the electric screwdriver to get the very long screws in. And soon the first bed was up. Along the edges sods had to be put back, so Lea, Janet and Chloe got busy doing that. Other tasks that kept us busy all morning were raking grass, digging up and pulling sods of grass up, shovelling soil in to wheelbarrows and emptying those in the new bed, digging deep holes for the new upright posts to go in, concreting round those posts etc. “Hard graft” it certainly was, but the result was certainly worth it. And once again us Goodgymmers showed everyone that we love a great task!

Chloe, Daryl, Caprice welcomed newbie Rute at The Brewhouse ready for the group run to the session. This was much to Rute's surprise as she wasn't expecting a run as just wanted to help volunteer. Luckily Rute loves a good run, so much so that she refused to drive to the session and put her coat in her bag and off she went. What a trooper! Tonight's session was to help our friends at Hope Housing sort through some charity clothing. The runners were met by Eleanor and James who made their own way to the task. The group got to work sorting through Hope Housing's Charity Shop clothing donations. Sorting through the ladies clothing there was Rute, Caprice, Daryl and Julie and on the menswear there was Chloe and James with Eleanor in charge of the children's clothing. It wasn't long until everything was sorted, it's amazing how much can get done with lots of help. Our next sessions to help Hope Housing will be 17th June and this will be a gardening task and on the 15th July we will be helping sort out their hand made soaps. We hope to see you there!