Twenty Goodgymmers congregated in the grounds of the wonderful Meadow Orchard in Crouch End for an emotional evening of doing good and getting fit.

Nurj O'Clock

This report is a bit late because frankly I found it a bit hard to write. Or more concretely, I tried a couple of times but failed miserably each time. You see, even in her absence, Nurj had managed to grab centre stage on Wednesday's task like she had done some many times over the last six years and I knew I would have to write a report with her as the protagonist for one last time. The words just didn't come, to be honest.

So, instead, I have decided to share with you the big Nurjehan-shaped hole she leaves on a normal Goodgym evening. She played many roles within our motley crew: self-appointed timekeeper, naughty gossipy aunt, strict school teacher when we needed a telling off, whingepot whenever we attended her least favourite task that shall now forever remain unnamed, indefatigable do gooder, tireless 5k/10k runner, unconditional friend, and perhaps, the one thing we'll miss the most, her enthusiastic cheerleading of everything Goodgym Haringey. She loved Goodgym. And she preached its praises at any given opportunity.

If I'm allowed a personal note, I'll personally miss a role she played too well without any fanfare or noise but that she relished and excelled at. Whenever we had a new runner in our group, it would always be either Nurj or myself reaching out to say hello to them. She would then proceed to tell the newbie all sort of crazy stories about how I am a mad area activator, I would then reply by telling the newbie to watch out for her because 'this one bites' and thus, within the space of thirty seconds, a newbie was eased into the dynamics of our group and was then shadowed by Nurjehan for the next 45 minutes, regaling them with whatever particular drama was happening at her school that week and making sure their evening was as fun as possible. I'll miss my newbie whisperer.

Our dearest Nurjehan Khan passed away on Thursday 18th July 2024, having completed 273 Goodgym tasks and along the way having become the unofficial face of Goodgym (her face is the landing page of the website). Goodgym Haringey will never be the same without her and we'll miss her.

I'll finish this here before she tells me off for going on too much.

<3

It's Our Birthday And We'll Cry If We Want To

In a moment of incredible timing, this evening also happened to be Goodgym Haringey's 9th Birthday. There will be other nights to celebrate and we will have a social to end all socials in due course, but we did mark the occasion with cakes, chocolate, and hell of a lot of tears.

We're very grateful to the folk at the Meadow Orchard for accommodating us at short notice (this was Nurjehan's favourite Haringey task) and they had loads of fun jobs for us. They even let us use axes on the night. Talk about cathartic.

Normal service will resume next week.

For now, just look after each other and I'm here if anyone needs a hug, a natter, or a cry.

Love to my wonderful Goodgym Haringey Fam

Huge appreciations to the amazing Goodgym crew who come down to help at the Saucony London 10km, one of the premier closed road inner city running events in the athletics calender. Goodgym assisted the team from Motiv Sports with coordinating this incredible event, helping with course marshalling, road crossings and sweep cycling on the day. Congratulations, and Thank You for your help!

Our wonderful, friendly, and green-fingered group of Liz, Sarah, and Steve chose GoodGym over semi-finals on Wednesday, as we made our way over to Kentish Town and a very special garden.

The Caversham Group Practice was our home for the evening, and we were welcomed by the lovely Jo and Sarah, who took us into their lush and peaceful Listening Space Garden.

Set within the Pratice's grounds, it's a gem of quiet and green, and we felt lucky to offer our Wednesday evening energies!!

Over 45 minutes we worked along the garden's pathways, stripping them of summer weeds and overgrowth, and we shared stories and caught up as we did.

It was a joy to meet Jo and Sarah, and we look forward to coming back soon!!

Mr. S is based in Camden and has some mobility issues and severe back pain. His consultant has advised him to have his mattress turned over as soon as possible. As Mr. S is unable to do this himself, GoodGym were asked to help. Consequently, Nick and I met up in Camden at lunchtime today to help flip a mattress for Mr. S.

Today's task was a pretty short Flip/tuck operation. Before starting (& after saying hello to Mr. S), we clarified with Mr. S exactly how he wanted his mattress flipped. In short, he wanted a straightforward roll of the mattress about it's longitudinal axis (no yaw or pitch rotations today!).

The fast flip was following by a slightly longer tucking, with a mattress protector and sheet being fitted around the mattress. Despite being slightly hampered by my natural inability to accurately match the length of a sheet to the length of the mattress based on sight alone, Nick and I completely finished today's mission within 10 mins of our start time.

With the glow of success buoying us up, we indulged in a short chat with Mr S before we left.

It was good seeing you, Nick! :)

It was yesterday evening. I made tea. I sat on my bed. I opened my computer and went to YouTube.

how to DIY fill hole in wall

This was what I searched, folks. I was still scarred from my last attempt at using polyfilla. Which was 20 minutes before the check-out-scary-inventory-deposit-reducing-meeting at my last rental. They took the deposit, folks, they took it to do the holes again.

Yet... this evening was different! And certainly because I was surrounded by the wonderful Alice, Faye(who was on their first GoodGym good deed - congrats!!), Jackie, John, Liz, and Steve.

We'd grasped the spring worm this evening, enjoying the longer light to traverse the bustle between Barbican and the Brady Arts and Community Centre, where our task awaited us.

Social Action for Health are a gorgeous charity working within the community in Tower Hamlets, and they need their volunteer room at the Brady spruced and enlivened, and we'll be doing just that over the coming weeks.

Our task this evening was to get the ball rolling, which we did by removing brackets from yesteryear and filling their left-behind holes.

This group took the tasks and ran with them to completion. Amidst a setting twilight, this room became a happy space filled with screwdrivers, pliers, hole filler, putty knives, and hoovers. And 40 minutes later, we'd gotten this space a short span away from being ready to paint.

Thanks, everyone, I had the most wonderful evening, and you made a real difference this evening.

Nice one!