A welcome return to Plaistow Primary School for this evening’s session in the sunshine, and an equally warm welcome to Nelson on his first ever GoodGym mission.

Hilary led the group from the Aquatic Centre through the streets of West Ham and upon our arrival at the school gates, we were guided through a classroom into an outdoor area where in one corner were all the pieces (we hoped) that would be needed to help build a wooden Wendy House that the children could then play in. Our first task was to try and find some instructions on how to construct the house, which proved more challenging than it should have as they were tucked away in a plastic bag wrapped inside some wooden strips wrapped inside some hard to open packing film, along with bags and bags of different sized screws.

Rosa took on the job of project manager whilst the rest of us gathered all the pieces to try and make sense of what we had and what needed to be done. The first task was to identity all the different sized screws, which was best done by pouring them all out onto the floor and painstakingly sorting by hand. In parallel Nick and Graham started to lay out the first pieces of the puzzle, whilst Nelson got to work unwrapping all the remaining parts. Guided professionally by Rosa, step 1 was to insert a window into the frame followed by fitting the front door taking note of the need to have all the spacers in the right place…judicious use of a handy battery operated screwdriver and we felt we were finally making progress, and quickly moved to step 2 which was attaching four joists to the floor panel - which required a bit more team co-ordination as the screws needed to be fitted from the top surface and, in spite of being at school, we didn’t have a ruler or tape measure to hand… - but somehow we got them all correctly attached…and then we ran out of time as the school needed to be shut for the evening, so we tidied up as best we could and closed the door behind us.

So in the end we didn’t build a house this evening, but we at least got some foundations in place - this particular mission could require a few return visits to get completed!

Rosa and Hilary led the team on the run from the Aquatics Center to the Up Garden.

Kevin and I took the shorter route from home and met Tim at the entrance on his first visit to the garden and Umar on his first GoodGym session.

Catherine from the UPGarden greeted us and gave us our instructions for tonight
* move chairs and tables in colour-coordinated groups
* sand chairs and tables removing loose old paint

We split up and had the groups sorted in now time and so onto the sanding.

Suz came to say hello and let us know about the fun packed weekend the garden had recently had holding a piano recital for the pupils of two local piano teachers and the 60th celebrations of the borough of Newham.

All items sanded and it was time to say our goodbyes.

Next week is a visit to see Sybil at Emmanuel Church where we'll be creating a new flower bed.

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