Ending our first visit to Penge Congregational Church, Jonny showed us a storage area that was full of rubbish needing clearing. This week’s session was our first go at disposing of the various artefacts there so it could be brought back into use. With Jonny picking out the rubbish, the GoodGym crew carried it through to a disused hall where it can be later carried out to a skip for disposal. The team tussled with some big items including pool tables, stage props and filing cabinets! We’ll be back to the church again to finish off the job, but we’ve already made a huge difference in opening up some floor space!

Such a lush evening for a goodgym session! The rain cleared nicely and had made the weeds come out super easily for our run to Cator Park. They've got 'Pride Picnic in the Park' at the weekend so we focussed on one little entrance to the arena area, tidying up the beds and chopping back the bushes. We had a pretty massive pile of greenery built up by the end. Top stuff, gang 👍 And cheers Millie for having us!

Bad jokes happen when you have a little bit of a sore throat in a vegetable garden, and you have really missed going out on a Goodgym community task!

We also had the privilege last night of having two James' and a Jami on the task, as well as me and Mark.

Arriving at the task after a chat about data and reporting (sorry James) we set about tidying the place up a bit. A lot of weeding, chatting about which weeds are actually good, or at least impressive in looks or resilience (hello bindweed). A lot of sweeping, jumping in weed/compost piles (Mark), and litterpicking.

All resulting in a much-improved space at the centre of the estate, and more of a clean slate for the summer. And soon we'll be back to do the fence painting when the weather's a bit better.

Well done team!

For this week’s task we returned to one of our longstanding tasks, Alexandra Recreation Ground, and their current project to repaint the metal fence that extends around the children’s play area. Last year we helped scrape the paint off the Alexandra Road side of the fence before the park’s Friends group repainted it, and this year they’re doing the Maitland Road side.

The GoodGym group met at the Bridge House before we took the short run along the High Street, into Penge Lane and under the railway bridge, then up Parish Lane to meet Millie.

She doled out wire brushes and we got to work, scraping off old paint and lichen. 40 minutes of work got the fence looking less flakey - a great start to this round of work.

We kicked off the evening naming ourselves and expressing which form of art we would give a go if we could, from improv comedy to lino printing to songwriting. After a nice jog through Crystal Palace, admiring the newly regenerated Italian Terraces, we arrived back at the Paxton Centre for our second annual table tightening championships.

The Paxton Centre is an arts cafe/workshop space with a built in gallery. It's cool. They're also a non-profit. Super cool.

We upturned the tables, unscrewed the legs, tightened them up on the inside, rescrewed them on, and levelled them out with the bits at the bottom. I'm not sure who won the championship. Everyone I guess.

After that we took a photo on the stairs as if we're Blazin' Squad and set off on our merry way.

Nice one, team. 🔥🔥🔥🔥