This evenings task was to help Slough Outreach at their new unit in Cippenham with a clothes sorting task.

On arrival Shin met us in the shop which was now looking really amazing with loads of newly donated items. But that wasn't where our task was going to be.

Instead Shin walked us over to the storage unit and took us into a huge room which was literally spewing with black bags full of donations! Our task was to sort the bags into piles of children's toys; children's clothes; women's clothes; men's clothes; homeware; books and CD's and items suitable for the homeless.

As the task looked mammoth, we decided to get stuck in and do our run afterwards...we are like the Salvation Armani as no task is too big for us!

Straight away we had the room divided into sections and bags were being torn up, emptied and sorted. A hive of activity which we all XL'd at! It's always a soleful experience sorting through donations especially shoes! What we unraveled tonight was that ladies clearly know that donating is a fashion ...their pile was the highest, closely followed by the children...they pulled their socks up and outgrew their superhero outfits ...but the men don't sweat it as their pile was the smallest - cap-tee-vating to see the trends here.

Shin was over the moon that we had managed to sort the whole room out...so a big shout out to the team

• Helping Hands Hamid;

• Joyous Jen;

• Jovial Jean;

• More Giving Manjit;

• Magnanimous Mehdi;

• Plentiful Pam;

• Raring To Go Ruth

Well done all....enjoy the rest of your Monday Punday

We had a last minute cancellation of task today but we never gift up as we soon had one lined up with Clare from Stoke Park Trust helping to wrap up presents for their grotto, tinsel up some tea lights, sort through Christmas lights and a bit of light hovering

We met at the task location at 6:30pm and those wishing to get out for a run went off for a 10 minute out and back run with Ruth back marking and me leading.

Whilst those who wanted to just do the task met us at the task location at 7pm

Clare gave us the low down on what she wanted us to do… there was no time like the present to crack on.

Pam, Keith, Devajani, Maya, Kam and Jean spent some qualitree time wrapping up the empty boxes

Ruth was doing her best not to get her tinsel in a tangle and get it nicely wrapped around the tea lights

Whilst I was doing my best impersonation of Freddie and the famous hoovering scene …

The task was nicely wrapped up in 45 minutes.

Thank you Clare for the last minute task - much appreciated

Oh what a night!

15 of us all dressed in our best ready to party the night away at the returning Slough CVS Awards Nights.

We had been shortlisted under Group of the Year award category and although I knew we had a good chance we were up against some great competition (some of whom were our task owners!).

The night started as all good nights do, with a dressed up crowd sipping on gin n’ juice with a chocolate fountain. Though the late arrivals (Nisha, Ricky and I) missed the chocolate fountain!

As we entered the lobby area we bumped into our ever so glamorous team members Jean, Ruth and Agni. Wow! Did you see how amazing Jean looked!!

After having our 1st photo taken (1st out of around 100!) we made our way into the function hall to see the rest of the gang at our tables.

Each and everyone looked amazing!

Slough CVS team opened the event with key note speakers and a warm up act from Ramesh, CEO!

And dinner is served… a delicious medley of South Asian food and a tray of fish..

We nearly won on the raffle! 170 is close to 180 right? But not close enough.

Then onto the dancing act from Creative Academy!

Dr Jim and Dom were an amazing double act on stage presenting the ceremony. A few drinks were consumed by now so can’t tell you how funny they were but I know I laughed (a lot!)

First up were the Business Impact Awards followed by our much awaited Volunteer of the Year Award. We had our very own Sutyee shortlisted for this category for all that she does to support junior parkrun.

Drum roll please……

The award goes to…. Cindy! Well done Cindy…

The highly commended award goes to SUTYEE!!! Wohooo! Applause please as she stands to receive her certificate

Next onto Public Sector Partnership Award

Now the one we were waiting for - Group of the year

First up is a short film on each group nominated. As always, each time GoodGym is mentioned there are cheers all round. Pipe down GoodGym!

And I am delighted to tell you that we received awards in 2 categories

Highly Commended for Making a difference to the environment

Winners of Designing innovative projects!

Even more applause 👏

What a night. It ended with a disco that had everyone up and dancing

We had such a great time! Uber Ricky dropped us home and somehow 'stole' the award which left me in a panic thinking i'd lost it! Luckily the thief returned in the morning with award intact!

Enjoy the photos.. we certainly enjoyed the night

This evening we were on our first task of helping Slough Outreach with their new Charity Shop come Community Hub in Cippenham.

This unit will be used to support the community as a place to meet, donate items for resale and items for the Outreach work that Shin and his team do.

Our task was to give the shop a clean up - many hands make light work... and that clearly showed this evening as we blitzed through the task in 45 minutes.

Prior to Shin arriving we went for a little jog around the block lead by our very own Jen...

On Shin's arrival we quickly made our way inside the warmth of the shop and got the dusters out to give the shelves a new lease of life.

• Jen, Agnija and Jean went straight onto window duty - it looked pane-ful but they did a smashing job;

• Mehdi was on mirror duty - he gave himself a great reflection;

• Hamid and Ruth were quick with those dusters but cleaning feels like a never-ending marathon, it’s a real dust-ance challenge;

• Peter had made a new best mate with Henry! They were like shake n' vac putting the goodness back.

Sorry, I’m a bit dusty when it comes to coming up with puns, so I'll stop there.

To summarise, it was great to have the opportunity to help Shin with this new community hub. It's going to be a great asset to the local community and we look forward to helping out as much as we can.

Ps - I think I found my new shoes for the Awards Ceremony next week!

Twas the night before Halloween and the good people of GhoulGym Slough were out and ready to give the town a Hallo-Clean at Salt Hill Park

We met at the Salt Hill Activity Centre and after a little photo shoot with Mike we descended into the deep dark depths of the park.

With no running for me tonight (legs are like the living dead after the Dublin marathon yesterday!), I sent the team out for a lap of the park - walk it, run it, jog it… just don’t get totally ghosted with your efforts!

Back from their fitness efforts we stuck to each other like glue and worked as a team to clear a section of the park.

With plenty of dirty hidden treasures in the bushes we had enough to keep us occupied. But when Hamid found what looked like a dumped rucksack with clothes and then we found rope and sheets we decided the witching hour was upon us and time to move on to another part of the park.

Although we had some great masks and accessories tonight, the best dressed award had to go to Sandy - we loved her outfit - she got it at the new boo-tique in Slough- Give em pumpkin to talk about!

With 6 full bags of rubbish collected it was time to call it a night! Everyone was thanked for their efforts and offered a ‘hero’ chocolate - bone appetite!

Witching you all a happy halloween

We descended on the allotments tonight knowing that the daylight hours were fading fast and that we would have to be a bit speedy on tonight's task.

With a team of 9 helpers even an overgrown plot was no battle for us! With tools in hand, we got to work - we were all beetrooting for each other! The weeds were very high again, but given the recent wet, dry, sunny, wet weather it's no wonder...we could all loose the plot when faced with these conditions.

Hamid worked very hard tonight and beavered away at all the spickey roots, Mehdi took charge of the wheelbarrow duties, whilst Kam, Jean, Sandy, Devajani, Maya and Pam worked on their little patches until all the weeds had been removed.

By 7.30pm it was getting too dark to do much more, although the plot looked miles better than it did at the beginning.

Great job all round!

Next week we are meeting at Salt Hill Activity Centre for 6.30pm and making our way to Northampton Ave to help Parvaaz Project with their garden space.

Tonight's task was to help St Mary's primary school with a fence painting task and leaf sweep of their reception playground area.

And as soon as we saw the fence we knew we were going to have a gate-ole time! With 5 colours to paint, it made sense to have 5 team members on this task with the remaining team on the sweeping task.

I could see how eager Hamid was to get stuck in! He even took his shoes off so they wouldn't get dirty! Top man for thinking of that (I was on sweeping duty but still managed to get paint on my trainers!).

Why did the fence go to art school? It wanted to brush up on it's picket skills!

So in order of fence panels we had:-

• Pam painting a blue-tiful shade of blue;

• Jean was caught red handed with her strawberry red shade;

• Mehdi was climbing to the sun in his yellow-vator;

• Peter hoped that there would be no purple rain tonight;

• Hamid was green with envy looking at everyone else's painting skills

Well done to Team Rainbow for doing such a great job

Meanwhile, in the naughty corner we had Chrissy; Sutyee; Agnija and me doing an un-be-leaf-ably good job of sweeping all the fallen leaves into mini piles and then bagging them! There was deffo no gossiping going on - just pure hard work! Team Sweep did good!

Next week we are at the allotments for our penultimate task before the dark nights start at 6:30! (That time is coming soon!)

It's bin a while since we last visited our friends at Slough Refugee Support but as always, it was lovely to see Keriann.

Our task this evening was to give the entrance area a big tidy up by removing moss, cutting back hedges, pruning rose bushes, pulling out weeds and planting pansies.

We met at Salt hill activity centre at 6.30pm and took a nice 1 km walk around the park to the task venue where Keriann was ready and waiting for us. With a quick task overview we were ready to get going.

It was great to have Hamid back on his second task with us. Hamid is so speedy with the shears that we likened him to a hamster.....beavering away at the hedge, we literally couldn't clear the ground quick enough.

Jean was all over the rose bushes and even found the one we donated a while back for the memory garden. Mehdi helped Jean cut back our rose bush to it could grow and then cut back the hedge that was a thorn in the side of the rose bush as it was stopping the light from getting to the plants. They definitely rose to the occasion

Peter was on a number of duties today as he always is. Pruning the other rose bush, turning over the soil, sweeping, collecting and disposing the debris. Peter even very kindly agreed to give the children's garden picnic bench a makeover. We look forward to seeing the end result soon.

Jen and Kam didn't moss around as they systematically scrapped the floor and disposed of it.

Pam and Abdulaziz concentrated on the main entrance walkway, clearing the weeds and mainly tidying up after Hamid.

Agnija arrived in time to clear the remaining patch in the memory garden.

Following all health and safety protocols we even had a few trashy moments..

All in all, with a lot of members tonight, we cleared the area in a really good time.

Keriann advised us of the AGM for Slough Refugee Support and invited us all to come along. I did a presentation last year at this AGM and really enjoyed meeting all those involved in such a valuable service in Slough. The AGM will be on Friday 25th August 10am - 12pm at 29 Church Street (Slough CVS meeting room). Everyone is welcome.

Mehdi, who I first met at Slough Refugee Support English class said at the end

SRS is like my family. They have supported me since I arrived here 7 months ago.

And tonight, Mehdi helped his SRS family with his GoodGym family.

This evening's task had so much going on! Firstly, a warm welcome to newcomers Tim, Sama and Hamid and the lovely ladies from GoodGym Windsor and Maidenhead - Jess, Sophie and Sheila. Thank you all for coming along to the session and a special one at that.

Thank you to Chrissy for hosting our 5th birthday task at St Mary's Farnham Royal Church of England Primary School. We managed to get a fair few tasks completed tonight including the learning garden, the play area and the side garden.

Hat's off to Team Dr who with cutting hedge technology chopped back the shrubbery to expose the window and security camera! Everyone was rooting for him to cut it back as sometimes trees crowd and well, let's face it, someone has to grow! Well done to Sheila, Jess, Sophie, Nimi and Jenni who all worked really hard on clearing this area.

So good to have Keira back with us...it's been too long. Team Sutyee had Keira and Ruth weeding the playground area.

Whilst over in the learning garden Team Harsha had Jean, Abdulaziz, Mehdi, Hamid, Sama, Tim, Pam and Kam clearing up the bed edges and deciphering the weeds from the plants (thank goodness we have keen gardeners in the group who know the difference).

Peter took on the lone ranger task of removing all the weeds along the perimeter of the school! And what a phenomenal job he did too!

Forty odd minutes in and we were all done....everyone keen and eager for the fitness session (or maybe I just imagined that).

We had games, circuits, confusion, basketball hooping, leg exercises, (hatred for me)... you name it...we worked it tonight.

The finale were the cakes, sing song and speech (you'll be glad to know that I didn't sing...and only did a tiny speech).

Thank you so much to all 21 team members who made our 5th birthday task so special.

Now onto our summary of the year in action.

Hi Year 5

Five years in and what can I say that hasn’t been said before. This group only exists because of YOU and your dedication to GoodGym Slough. We have community in the heart of everything we do. We are diverse, we are open to all, we target groups that need the help and we do it all with such passion and love. And we continue to grow with new members joining us and finding new task owners.

Since launching in July 2018, we have tallied a total of 4240 Good Deeds! We’ve helped over 30 local groups and charities with tasks ranging from gardening to litter picking to flyering to painting to marshalling to packing and stacking, sorting and storing. You name it, we've done it.

So what have we been up to in the year leading to us turning 5...here is a little reminder in the only way we write with GoodGym - with puns!

• We gave a lidl help to local residents with shopping tasks;

• We were rooting for all our new gardening projects;

• We had a Ra-leigh good thyme at the spring, summer sessions at the allotments;

• Our art will always go on with the help we've given to Artful hub with indoor painting, leaflet distributing and what a crate job we did too with helping Eva move units;

• Jen did a great job of b'rambling on with her BBOWT tasks at Haymill Nature Reserve;

• Save - a - life : Surrender your knife was probably our most emotional task this year;

• We surfed the net-work with many networking events in Slough promoting all things GoodGym Slough;

• Christmas was a time for happy holly-days as we finished the year with our annual hamper wrap with Slough Outreach and called it a day till the infamous January challenge!;

• We marshalled our way through the year with tasks at junior parkrun as the cheer squad, sleighing with Santa at the Burnham Parade, stalling it at the Cippenham fayre and sharpening our knowledge with the Knife Angel task;

• The Golden Girls were formed after another epic task at Thames Hospice care. The jackets even made a cameo appearance at junior parkrun last Sunday;

• Let us spray with all the new Churches we have supported this year. From St Paul's to St Marys to St John the Baptist;

• Slow Ways or is it Slough Ways? We verified the route from Slough to Eton. Enjoyed a coffee in Eton then re-routed ourselves back to base;

• Acting like kids at the schools we helped tidy up (especially tonight);

• Decluttering Slough of the hoard of litter litter-ally everywhere!;

As for the races, this year we have glowed, beat a boat and run backwards (not literally). We started off with the Dorney 10k Glow in the Dark run at which Gauri did her first ever 10k distance. Followed by a little run around Paris with Ricky where he got his marathon PB and I ate loads of cakes at each water station. Loosely followed by a backwards route run in London with Harsha - never forget that night out! And our final escapade was a 10k run along the River Thames trying to beat a boat with Jenny, Claire and Ricky!

Reward with Awards

Most memorable task - Knife Angel

As 5 of us guarded the Knife Angel and guided visitors around the Angel... who could forget the mum that lost her son in a case of mistaken identity to a knife crime? Not a dry eye that day.

Most Impactful task - Slough Refugee Support

Our most impactful task this year have been the ones we have carried out with Slough Refugee Support English Class. The class participants have very much enjoyed doing something back for the community and 4 of their members have even joined us now on our weekly Group Runs.

Best Race - Beat the Boat

What a brilliant concept of a race, run by a local runner and delivered in a simple yet effective way. Ok, it's not a PB type of event but it was full of camaraderie, support and fun (and processo!)

Biggest contributor - Jen

Wow! what hasn't Jen done this past year? From group runs at both Slough and Windsor and Maidenhead, plus missions and task force ownership of the monthly task with BBWOT, she racked up the good deeds - WELL DONE JEN

Best Photography session - Allotments

Our monthly visit to the allotments is not only a pure strength session of digging, lifting, wheelbarrowing soil, it's also one where we get our best shots (photo type not drinking!)

Best Dressing award – Burnham Lions Christmas Fayre

We all looked adora-bell in our Santa hats and baubles

Best Grit and Effort award – Ujala Foundation garden sessions

So much to do such little thyme, pure effort was needed on this mini project back in March.

Best Community Award - King's Coronation Weekend - The Big Help Out

Our collaboration task with Slough Bid and St Mary's Church led to a 30 plus turnout including residents and local business on a litter pick around Slough Town centre.

Cheers to five years...here's to many more

Tonight's task was to distribute leaflets for the lovely Eva and her Artful Hub/Antz Kids on their art classes and children's club classes in the Britwell area.

Lift, rack, raise and throw!

We met at Kennedy Park and did a fitness session involving medicine ball slams (and throws!); kettlebell swings; agility ladder runs. The team were split into 2 and one went off to do a walk/run up the path and back whilst the other slammed, racked, pressed and swung heavy kit around...all in a controlled manner of course. I do love Kennedy Park, it has a great 'hill sprints' hill, you can see the trading estate towers from there and it has lovely housing estates surrounding it.

As Eva's Antz Kids Club is based in Britwell, it made perfect sense to be in this area. I must admit, it's a part of Slough that I know that well but that's the beauty of GoodGym, you get to go to every area and see what it has to offer!

After the fitness session we headed up Wentworth Ave towards the library (which is really impressive and worth a visit by the way), and then split off into 4 pairs with 30(ish) leaflets each. The aim was to see which pair would come back first to Kennedy Park. ​​

Leaflet dropping is always better in 2's! So off we went in our pairs taking a few streets each. Well within 40 minutes we had all distributed 300. We definitely flew this through this task tonight.

First team back were Sara and Jen, closely followed by Claire and I, then Pam and Kam and last but not least Jean and Mehdi.

Next week we are at the Cherry Orchard Allotments, meeting at Masaani on Shaggy Calf Lane at 6.30pm