Hightown was chilly tonight so the 5 of us were wrapped up warm. It was Musa’s first time out in his new black GoodGym t-shirt so it was nice to see it peeping out from under his coat once we got warmed up in the Methodist church hall. We enjoyed hot chocolate, coffee mince pies and chocolates while getting our hi vis from Maz, one of the organisers of the High Town Lantern Procession. And then it was time to usher the families into the procession. Martin and Duncan made an excellent job of stopping the traffic to allow the children and their parents to get safely across. Hill and Gail led the procession down the road with Musa helping to stop traffic at the side streets so that the children arrived at the square and gathered in front of the tree. We enjoyed listening to St Matthew’s School Choir singing Christmassy songs whilst we kept our eyes peeled to ensure there were no children near the road. We joined in the countdown and the lights were turned on 🎄 and it was time to relinquish our hi vis and return home.

This was GoodGym's first time for helping out at a High Town Community even, and there were a few teething troubles. Gill and Ruth arrived in good time at the school, eager to get stuck into the task. However the enthusiasm soon waned when we were told by the Community Liaison person that we couldn't start setting u the hall for the Christmas Market until after the children's lunches had finished. We'd been asked to arrive ready to start at 1 pm but we would have to hang around until after 1:45 before we could get started.

GoodGymers are by nature active people, so sitting around in an overly hot school room wasn't the best start to the task, although it did give us a chance to get to know our newest member Mohammad and chat with Yusuf who we haven't seen for quite a while.

Once the children had finished in the hall, we took the lead in clearing up - Tigger grabbed the broom from an unsuspecting dinner supervisor and got stuck into sweeping up the debris left from school dinners - hundred and thousands, squashed fish fingers and assorted crumbs. While this was done the rest of us started stacking the chairs and collapsing the tables that were not needed. We had been given a carefully planned map of the hall and were soon shifting things around to match the plan. It soon became apparent that the plan was a little "organic" so we needed to second guess what was in the minds of the organisers - it's a good job that one of our superpowers is telepathy!!! It didn't take us long to get the tables positioned correctly and labelled , ready for the stall holders.

Next we started clearing furniture from the main corridor and getting more tables ready for some additional stall holders. Musa , Yasin, Benjamin and Gill made a great job of getting the tombola ready. The teachers were super impressed with our efficiency. Meanwhile Tigger had identified that as the stall holders were arriving many of them needed support bringing their boxes of goodies in from the car park and was soon detailing us to help. Going outside the school with a subteam at such a pace I could only get a photograph of their backs, as they went to help bring in boxes of festive table arrangements and wreaths.

By the time our work (alongside other volunteers) was ended the hall looked fabulous with a great variety of different stalls and games, and there was a real buzz about the place. The head teacher was so thankful for all our help, and we slipped away leaving the parents and children to enjoy the Christmas Market (also abandoning Benjamin, who hadn't realised that we had gone - apologies, especially as this was only your second task).

We are hopeful that this might be the start of a new GoodGYm parttnership with the school and look forward to getting involved in other events in the coming year.

Our intrepid trio met once again at Sundon Park Baptist Church for their regularly Singing Café. Yasin , Musa and Charmaine are old hands at this wonderful opportunity for ome of the older residents to gather together for their Friday Morning singing session. Yasin and Musa cycled over despite getting cold hands due to the frosty weather; they were soon helping Charmaine to set out the tables and chairs and to prepare the fruit and snacks. And then they were ready to welcome the participants, who look forward so much to this weekly opportunity to meet up, share some singing, and enjoy the food. There were 18 guests who had a fabulous time as well as enjoying the warmth of the building and the warmth of the welcome.

Sub-zero temperature made us all very grateful for our indoor meeting location where we could get thoroughly warmed up before dashing out into the frosty night air.

It's definitely bobble hat and gloves weather now but all the warm up and running gave us good central heating so it wasn't uncomfortable as we headed along the busway to the clubhouse at 61FC.

On arrival Cliff issued us with rollers and brushes and we set to work making the walls of the home changing room a lovely baby blue, the 61FC team colour.

With a team strong in number we managed to get the big home changing room sorted very quickly and moved on to the away changing room. With all the relevant walls sorted it was time for washing brushes and cake 🍰

Lizzy had just completed her 💯 th good deed and earned her GoodGym Wings🪽 Well done Lizzy!

Back again for round two of Goodgymers Luton postal service with flyers for the High Town Christmas Fair this coming weekend. This afternoon was wonderfully sunny but chilly so the team worked at a brisk pace to keep fingers and toes warm.

Yasin and Gill worked to the right hand side of the streets and Musa and Tigger took the left. The upcoming festival information distributed up the hills and down and around the town.