A nice, festive session last night! We were helping out Beckenham Park Care Home with some decorating.

First up, some of us met at the Bridge House (and shared our fave xmas tunes), a few people met at Shortlands Station and a few made their own way to the task.

It was a pretty long run for most of us (4.5k!) but a good way to warm up on a freezing cold night.

When we arrived, we were assigned to different parts of the care home to add festive flourishes:

🎄 Decorating a tree

🌿 Adding fake greenery to the stairs

🍽 Spicing up the dinner tables

🎀 Putting up beads and ribbons around photo frames and on the dog (see pic)

It was good to do an inside task in that weather although I'm not sure most of us expected somewhere so fancy...!

We smashed through it all in half an hour and went our separate ways.

Nice one team! 💪

The hardest part of today’s good deed was finding our way through the jumble in Mr R's shed to locate the bed frame we’d been asked to move indoors… this involved first removing the shed doors! The belongings stored inside meant the doors couldn’t slide open, so Ian and Linda had to undo the fixings and lean the doors inwards before lifting them out of the way. Then it was easy to uncover the bed frame and carry it carefully, section by section, up to the bedroom where it will provide Mr R with a more comfortable place to sleep. We of course re-attached the shed doors afterwards!

For our second Tuesday evening Bromley sesh (🥳) we were at Southlands Road Allotments. Local sustainability charity Greener and Cleaner have inherited a space which they're turning into a community garden. There's a few fruit trees, a shed of sorts, a compost and not much else. The plan is to turn it into a thriving growing space where the local community can learn to grow and eat fresh fruit and veg! 🥕

Can you dig it?

Job one was digging a hole for a massive metal container. It's going to become an accessible growing bed but first needed cementing in place.

Gettin' twiggy with it

Meanwhile we needed to transfer loads of the twigs and branches from the top of the compost heap into the metal container. These will have compost added and then rot down.

Bottling it

Whilst this was happening, Jo and Clare were cutting up huge plastic bottles into a specific shape so that they can become strawberry pots!

Nailing it

The majority of the materials used for the community garden are repurposed and upcycled. Stephen was removing nails from some pallet wood using a hammer.

Cracking job team! 👍 Thanks for sharing your favourite veg and your energy to get this community green space up and running 💪 Special shoutout to Jo who attended her first GG sesh! Welcome to the gang.

Ms A's jasmine bush had gone all jazz hands and was threatening to take over far more than its share of the garden. But a little haircut later - and a bit of disentangling from the pots on the wall above and the rose bush to the left of it - and it was looking all neat and tidy.

Remember that bit in Matilda?

Firstly, shout out to Kelsey for her first GG session! Shout out to Ian for back marking and getting the bin bag! Shout out to Nathan who made his way down from GG Southwark! Shout out to James for getting his DBS check sorted so he can help out older people, and shout out to everyone else for being rad.

We kicked off the evening with the great debate - DogGym or no DogGym - should people with pooches be allowed to bring them along??? DogGym won but there were a few abstentions and a couple of no's so we'll leave them out for the mo. Mark says no bark. 🐶

Rubbish GoodGym

Bit of a glitch this evening - we were meant to be cutting back at Captain Sensible but we arrived to no host... ooooops. Luckily for us, there was plenty of rubbish a a fair few weeds dotted around the place. Ian grabbed a bag from a local shop - we filled it up easily, and left a nice pile of weeds too. Job done in 5 minutes. And we left it spotless so it'll look delightful in the daylight!

On the way back we did a bunch of weird and wonderful exercises for the quads - from NSEW tip toeing to Hungarian one-legged squats(??). Safe to say we were weak at the knees afterwards (in a good way).

Nice one everyone! And sorry for the slip up. Cool pics though.

Next week is a Halloween special - dress up if you like! We'll be painting some walls ghostly white at the Young Lewisham Project - sign up here. 👻