A return visit to Emmanuel Church to see the wonderful team.

Sybil had planned for us to start the digging of the new flower bed but due to how warm it had been the ground was too hard but as always she had a plan b.

Digging in the already established beds for some new planting and prune back the over hanging tree branches and remove the low shoots.

I was asked to check out a task for next month....painting the room we helped clear last year.

Pruning and digging complete we headed in side for some refreshments....

Next week is a visit to Cody Dock for leafleting to let local residents know about the upcoming event Lighting up the Lea

Ten of us assembled tonight for a return to Care4Calais East London, this time to help them move out of their storage space. Over the winter and spring we’ve got to know this place well — a jumble of coats, shoes, sleeping bags and other essentials that make their way to refugees and asylum seekers in need.

True to form, the evening began with the classic Care4Calais conundrum: what exactly are we meant to be doing? A couple of detective-like phone calls to long-standing volunteer Andy gave us a few clues, with some further reliance on instinct and common sense. Before long we were stacking, bagging, and squeezing items into boxes and bags ready for them to be loaded into a van and shipped elsewhere.

By the end, the place looked pretty different — something closer to neat piles than to chaos and I'm confident we’ve saved Care4Calais' volunteers a whole lot of time and effort in our short stint there.

Massive congratulations to Chris for hitting the 50 good deed milestone (well actually 51 now... and thanks for bringing the sweet treats!)

Next week, we're off to Hackney Marshes Adventure Playground and can't wait to see what Ange has lined up for us.

Graham took on leading the run from the Aquatic Center and welcomed Yumna on her first goodgym run.

The plan for tonight was to make a start on creating new flower beds on the left hand side of the Church.

I made a quick stop to buy a cake for Sybil so we could celebrate her birthday after the task.

We arrived but noticed Sybil did not have any tools ready and some new faces from the church were also they to greet us.

It seems the church committee had decided we had to join them in celebrating Sybils birthday.

We always do get some great refreshments when we visit the church but tonight was wonderful and is was an honour to be asked to part of the celebrations,Sybil is a little ball of energy who has always got and idea or project planned.....which she ask for our help with.

We spent time chatting with the church members who were all very interested in learning more about what Goodgym is and how we help.

We did have to tell Yumna that not every task is quite as chilled as this.

Next week we are heading back to Plaistow school to continue with the wendy house building https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/assemble-a-wendy-house-and-a-pyrex-painting-board-at-plaistow-primary

Three years ago we had a community mission to construct a donated metal shed at The Up Garden.

Over the years the shed has required some repairs and developed a leaking roof, but after a fund raising campaign they have enough money for a new shed so how could we turn down the request to demolish the shed.

Catherine met us at the Garden, asked us to move the last few items in the shed and to remove the guttering as it will be reused.

Hammers in hand we set to working on demolishing the shed,an ideal task after a stressful day at work for Kevin and for Chris to celebrate his 50th GoodGym task

Once the shed was down and taken apart we piled the pieces ready for collection by the local council.