We started the evening with some treats from Raleigh to celebrate the new partnership between them and GoodGym and we finished the evening by announcing that Harry has been chosen to be one of the GG / Raleigh ambassadors. Great for them and for us!

We had 3 groups heading to PARCS tonight... "meet you there", "chat pace" and "mid pace".

Unfortunately no-one was there to greet us and let us through to the back garden 😕 but fortunately there was a fair bit of weeding and rubbish clearance to do in the front driveway so we were still able to do them a bit of a favour and also had plenty of opportunity to catch up with each other. Great to see so many faces and also to have some sunshine!

Wilson showed excellent determination in litter retrieval from under the hedges and Mick tried to make his good deeds count as much as his t-shirt suggested by attacking the weeds with vigour! Secateurs were repurposed for digging out weeds and rubbish & the brown bin was pretty full by the time we finished.

I've emailed the person who we arranged this with so so hopefully we will manage to get another date in to get grips with the garden!

Don't forget that it's the London Marathon on Sunday so send all your best running positive thinking to Dave who will be covering the 26.2 miles.

A variety of jobs were on offer this evening.

Captain Detail took the lead on the unloading, counting, itemising and reloading the store room and kitchen. Many shouts were heard asking how many cups, how many sets of cups, how many stickers.... Someone wondered if the coffee beans needed counting. Mick was doing sterling work (on his first ever GG good deed) loading everything back into the store room using all his campervan storage expertise.

In the main seating area, a gazebo was put up and taken down, perfectly fitting back into its original packaging.

In the toilets there was a whole cubicle that needed painting and the ceiling in the wildly decorated toilet also need another coat of white..

There was also a wide variety of drinks and snacks to be sampled and even some going home presents! It was like a proper party.

We also finally united Wilson with their 200 good deeds t-shirt.

Tonight we epitomised the "do good get fit" hashtag!

We met at Fratton CC then ran and cycled to the Package Free Larder on Elm Grove where we were met by our walking team and Clare from Share Portsmouth.

We then formed a human chain from the basement to the back door to move all the donations to Share from their store into the van (shout out to FoodCycle for the van loan!). Jo (aka Captain Detail) took charge of the van loading / life size Tetris and managed to fit everything into the back.

It was then a race as to who would get to the Cascades first... van vs human, the humans won!

We then formed another human chain and passed everything in to the store room where Val and Judy ably sorted them onto shelves in a logical order.

There was an amazing amount of stuff passes down the line including tents, baby stuff, bread maker, pasta makers, tools, lawn mowers, Flamingo Ringo.... it was like an episode of the Generation Game.

10 out of 10 tonight for a classic GoodGym task!

We welcomed Nikki to her first ever GoodGym task tonight, and Sharon to her first Group Run this evening - welcome to the madness, guys!

Our task also took us to a new beneficiary this evening in the form of The Repair Cafe and Library of Things team. Their amazing aim is to promote repairing and sharing as a way of reducing waste - check out their website here.

Clare had literally only just received the keys for their new premises so we were some of the first to get stuck in with the makeover of the space. We got to work peeling tape off the floors, scraping glue off the walls and removing velcro from every conceivable surface. Sharon and Tracey got scrubbing in the kitchen space, which has definitely not seen a damp cloth in a while!

Our visit was rounded off with a biscuit and offers to come and help out again - I'm sure we'll be back in the not to distant future!

A big welcome BACK to Toni who has changed her job and got a puppy (amongst other things) since we last saw her.

Tonight's mission was to build some shelves for SPARK. We'd been warned that it might be like a giant meccano but with Dave's engineering brain and Jo's flat pack experience we managed to put together a total of 7 (I think!) sets of shelves.

Those who didn't want to build were able to sand and varnish some tables.

If we'd been playing innuendo bingo, we'd have got a full house for sure.... screws, holes, flaps all got various amounts of airtime. This is the real reason that GoodGym is for adults only 🤣

We packed up feeling like we'd made a good effort (& all without ruining the brand new carpet) and then Judy became Artistic Director and got us to make our logo. Larry the dog was either entertained or totally confused... much like us!

We've already had this lovely message from Becki:

Thank you so much for fun, laughter and your kindness xxx awesome group