This rainy morning, Laura, Tori, Sophia and I went to PNK Garden to help build a polytunnel. Hosting us was Lara, founder of PNK Garden, but calling the shots was Lindsay, who had the instructions and the know-how. 👷

We started cautiously, counting through all the pieces and grouping them into sets of pieces that would go together, and then assembling sections together. Another PNK volunteer, Chris arrived just in time, to screw all the parts that we had assembled together, using a power drill.

Once the four "loops" of the polytunnel were up, we could start to see how everything fit together and we worked together to get rest of the frame up. This sometimes involved undoing parts and redoing them, as we learned how the frame was supposed to hold together. We were interrupted twice by well-meaning neighbours who had opinions about how to do it! By then, Tori, Sophia and I were so invested that we decided to stay a bit longer to see the frame to its finish. It was totally worth it; see the end product in the photos!

This morning, five keen beans went to Kingswood house (former home of "Mr Brovril"), to help Kingswood Arts, who have recently taken over the lease of the building from Southwark council. This is the last full week of preparation that they have before they will open to the public, and there was still lots to do!

We helped by stripping the walls and cleaning everything. There was so much furniture in the room, and we had to keep moving it about to be able to get to all the areas of wall, so this was an extremely active task. (An extra well done to Rose and Diane for running to the task, despite all the hills! 💪🦵)

We also welcomed Aleksandra to her first task 🥳 - she did a meticulous job of cleaning many tables, and well done for picking up the endless task of sweeping all the dust that we were bringing up! 👏

The two hours passed very quickly, and we tidied up in time to leave. As we left, we managed to give away on leaflet to an interested local, and James gave some good touristing tips to Aleksandra of the local area. Community comes in all forms at Goodgym! 💛

Daryl, Gemma, John, Lindy, Paulin and Sam met the TRAID team in Peckham straight after they closed their store at 20:00 to help them clear out the store to be ready for the Spring collection.

Everyone got stuck in with the task of clearing the clothes rails of clothes and hangers, but since Sam came earlier he was given the task to wipe the tops of the hanging lights of dust. It hadn't been done since November, but it looked like it hadn't been done for years with the amount of dust! 😳

We managed to finish our tasks with five minutes to spare! Well done team 💪