Squeezing in another good deed before our picnic we scurried around the streets closest to the Prince Philip Maritime Collection Centre with letters warning people about the noise during the community day and spreading the word on all of the activities on offer. A job well done topped off with a very yummy picnic at Well Hall Pleasuance :)

What a difference a week makes, and a glorious sunny Sunday made a brilliant day for the Hornfair Climate Awareness Community Fun Day, organised by the Friends of Hornfair Park in Charlton.

5 goodgym-ers attended at various times of the day, starting with set up tasks such as traffic marshaling & stall setup, progressing through the day with litterpicks, wayfinding & answering queries. We were based on a stall with the Friends of Hornfair, but also right next to the Friends of the Pet Cemetery, another regular GoodGym task venue.

Excellent music, lots of interesting stalls and amazing food smells made the day fly by, and the last tasks of the day involved final litterpicks and a bit more traffic marshaling to ensure the park was cleared safely.

A lovely event we'll hopefully see again next year ☀️

The good people of SE7 had been out partying as usual - loads of beer cans and cigarette ends littering the streets! Six of us and another lovely local volunteer (we're encouraging her to join Goodgym!) tackled our usual areas of the Woolwich Road, Anchor & (no) Hope Lane and Bugsby's Way.

We filled 10 bags of rubbish including three of aforementioned bottles, cans and those annoying BuzzBall cocktail containers as well as a few bottles of spirits. Enough to create the bar you really don't want to drink at... There were the usual piles of bits of plastic, takeaway containers, cigarette packs and a trowel!

As usual we adjourned at the end for the kind of drink we could enjoy - M&S coffee. Thanks to everyone who turned out as the litter was quite bad in places.

After a busy morning, this was the third task of the day for some of the group with several runners heading straight over from our session at Maryon Wilson Community Garden to lend a hand at Halstow Primary School.

Amongst the hive of activity with staff, parents and children busy painting, sanding and creating play equipment, our mission was to help transform the playground by building some little cabins for the children. AND we managed to create 2.5 little cabins. They may not have all passed a building inspector's scrutiny, but thanks to the collective ingenuity of the group they were successfully cobbled together and beginning to take shape. Thankfully there were no crate expectations of the quality of the craftsmanship.

A welcome BBQ provided some much-needed fuel and made this a particularly palatable task. The weather tried its best to spoil proceedings, and the rain arrived in force, but it didn't dampen our spirits although we did get a little cold and some may have developed cabin fever.

Well done everyone. We'll likely be back at Halstow Primary School before long to help with further fun construction projects based on what the children want build in their playground!

What a fun filled, mud filled, pun filled Wednesday evening we had this week! *Stay tuned for as many oarsome boat/ sailor puns as we could come up with in this report.

For those of us who met for the run from Charlton House, this week's icebreaker was deceptively thought provoking:

"If you could relive one moment in your life, what would it be?"

What I failed to anticipate was the immediate descent into philosophy:

What actually counts as a 'moment'? Are you reliving it, or changing it? Which self gets to choose? Your current self or your younger self? 🙄

After several minutes adrift in a sea of existential pondering, I found myself pleading, "No more questions!"

To be fair, that's something I say at least five times a day to my son, Arthur. Poor boy. But hey, someone has to stamp the curiosity out of children, right?

Responses ranged from the birth of children, to choosing that dream career that our pesky parents forbade, to extra cheesy points for Sarah for picking the moment she came along to a GoodGym session! 🧀🥳

Anyway, before we drift too far off course...

A huge welcome to Rhena and Candida on your first Good Deeds with us! And an extra shout-out to Rhena for completing her first run. We hope you're both hooked and don't immediately jump ship!

Our task for the evening was at the lovely community garden at the Prince Philip Maritime Collections Centre, where our much-loved rowing boat had finally reached the end of its voyage. And so, with a heavy heart it was time to break up the old and make way for a younger model.

The steps were as follows:

1) Remove all the soil from the old boat

2) Smash it up with shovels (One member of the group might have enjoyed smashing the boat up a little bit too much...he certainly made his Mark.)

3) Break up the wood to wheelbarrow to the bins

4) Debate exactly how on earth we were going to get the new, bigger boat into position (this took a while)

5) Shovel out more soil and grass

6) Tow Tow Tow the boat into position and attempt to secure it with blocks of wood

At times our plans felt a little rudderless, but somehow we kept things afloat and while we may need to come back to fully anchor the boat in place, that was a job well done in the pelting rain - hardened sailors that we are!

After that, it was time to run, walk, or otherwise navigate our way home.

Thanks everyone for another oar-some evening!

Coming up This weekend we have:

Parkrun volunteering

Helping at the Family Fun Day in Hornfair Park

Clean up Charlton

Leafleting for Prince Philip's Community Day

GoodGym Picnic!

Until next time, lovely people!

Rachel

Today we put the Gym in GoodGym at Maryon Park Community Garden in Charlton, where 9 of us met for today's community mission. Group one cleared various piles of broken wood & debris, including everything from doors & trellis to broken plant pots & grubby toys...What a load of rubbish...? Maybe not. Whilst a lot of the debris is due for collection & disposal on Monday, some of the toys were cleanable, hopefully for future use or donation to the local Toy Library.

Group two proved they were hard as snails, tackling some troublesome weed growth in various areas of the garden & helped cleaning the toys that had been found.

Good-gym rains supreme, as did the sky today, although gratefully waiting until our tasks were finished this morning ☔️

Thanks all, until next time!