Six GoodGymers helped Sparks make the store even sparkkier for Christmas. We welcomed Rosie for her very first task and she got in to the Christmas spirit with Janka and Alexis decorating the tree with massive bows. Dave, Jason and Vaguely Northern Darren were told to cluster the paper snowflakes in the ceiling tiles, and after initial success, were thwarted by thin string and loose tiles! A quick addition to the strings by the more than capable paper snowflake making engineers, we completed the task faster than you could recite Santa's raindeers names.. Rudolph, dasher, comet, blitzen, prancer...See, that quick! All done (and I'm reliably informed that the decorations are all still up! (and not just the ones Lexi came over to do when she saw we were struggling! We love going to Sparks and hope to be back soon, unless the toaster needs moving!

A bumper night of GoodGymming for regulars and new GoodGymmers alike - six lovely people completing their forat ever task, welcome Rob, Wendie, Charlie, Emma, Kirsten and Marta who's no longer a mystery!

Almost half-and-half walkers and runners, 6 of us made the most of the transit time to walk and talk, the 8 runners making a quicker arrival and getting some introductions done in time for our arrival - thanks Vaguely Northern Darren for run leading and Dave G for backmarking having already helped with document checks. Jason was most excellent as a walking group back marker as we struggled more keeping six of us together walking through the city centre.

The delicate tram-moving proved way too anxiety inducing for me but the excellent TaskForce were much better at it, supported by the not-so-strong yet team whilst those already warmed up somehow shifted an incredibly heavy ex-House of Fraser cosmetic counter out of the way - apparently it felt like solid granite (though so did the blatantly perspex tram cover).

The transport zone was ready for a make-over with fabric being stripped from walls, shelves cleared and a low wall (astro-)turfed as the new location for the "Do not touch this" tram which we all made sure we touched, obviously.

Meanwhile, lots more wood and metal was shifted to clear space to a door which led to another room of wood and metal that all wanted shifting to another mystery room that already contained wood and metal - that's just our sort of job! Some of the wood was from theatre sets - Sparks is a creative space and they've developed contacts all over the city to make use of items which may otherwise be chopped up - this time is was mysterious black shapes and a couple of arrows, plus fluffy white boards just too long to be easily tipped or moved. our speciality.

Before we knew it, our time was up and it was "find somewhere for the final task photo", knowing that we're back to Sparks next week for a planned task - this had been an "eek, can you come along, we really neeeeeed you" request. So Chiristmas decorating it is for next week, what with it being November by then...

All of this was rounded off with a drink and more chat at Club Haus, pots of tea winning hands down again, Caroline, Marianne and Helen playing teapot tetris to get all the tea things back on a single tray whilst Ed supervised wearing a t-shirt that he'd received for completing an event instead of his usual volunteer wardrobe.

A great night, same time, same place next week?

When was the last time you moved your toaster? Did crumbs spill everywhere? Was it 7ft high? If the answer to all of those was yes how much marmite do you get through!!!!

Six goodgymers met at Sparks to move a toaster. Veterans of toaster moving might remember we had to empty it first before. Imagine our shock when the toaster was empty. All we had to do was move it across the floor to the other side. How hard can it be? After debating the best way to move it without scratching the floor we settled on sliding a cloth underneath…. and off we went at speed…. Scratttttttch… a quick adjustment and we were off again. We were soon across the shop floor and got it tucked up in the corner. All that was left was to arrange seats into a circle for the clown life drawing. Apparently the clowns are full clothed… which is probably for the best. And we were done. Well done everyone!

If anyone gets this far tell us your best clown joke or fact.

6 runners, 4 walkers and a cyclist (not the set up to a joke, an actual fact!) made their way to Sparks to help get them ready for their first Birthday on Saturday.

Helen joined us for her first group run after deciding to see what the difference is between morning sessions at Windmill Hill, to the evening crowd in Queen Square!

We all converged in the alley behind Sparks and Lucy showed us to the toaster that we duly emptied, shifted 2 metres, them filled again!

NikFrancesMarianne and I, Vaguely Northern Darren, made light work of table and chair organising, before we all went upstairs and shifted some not very light stage sets. My first time using a trolley thing, also needing some extra wheels to shift it, taking around 6 people and a significant amount of time manoeuvering , before we found that 4 people (if one of the 4 is Valè, could actually carry it much quicker! The service lift was an experience, that if you weren't there, you wouldn't understand 'man'.

After realising the door somewhere wasn't shut properly, Jordan braved the 3rd floor on his own, and survived to close the door and get us moving again. Everyone worked hard tonight, including Frances and Richard working tirelessly at keeping the doors open.

Back downstairs at 7:45 for a quick group photo before Frances and Marianne spontaneously joined the GoodGym Eats crew, while Caroline stuck to her guns of never doing anything spontaneously in her life and ran home.

Thanks to Frances for the pun, honourable mention to Richard for 'Up down Junk'. [edit from Melanie (in Finland) - we definitely need to use that one!]

It was a double-header group run for Bristol GoodGym with the walkers heading to a different task than the runners!

The runners sprinted (at a jogging pace) over to St Werburgh's Community Centre for the first tidy up of the outside space this year - we're hoping to make this a regular task this year to get on top of the more pesky weeds. We think there was a yoga/relaxation class going on as people in one room were lying in the dark, otherwise we should probably have alerted someone...

The runners did say they could so with more tools there - asked for info to pass to the task owner, the on-chorus response was "snippy-snips" at which point Melanie realised that, much like parenting toddlers, its sometimes not useful to have used nicknames for items. It's both short and long snippy-snips desired - or secateurs and shears to is gardening professionals.

Meanwhile, the runners returned to the day-time Community Mission task beneficiary at Sparks to get a second coat of paint on the newly green and blue walls. With rollers and dodgy brushes, it was a much quicker start which was great as we'd have been needing to leave before Dave had managed to get the lid off the paint at lunchtime!

With both areas looking fabulously smart, it was time to RV back at Workout where there was speed-dating happening but we were all talked out.

Our second daytime foray to Sparks as traders are moving in, out and shaking it all about.

This time we were refreshing the area that had been hosting Emmaus and had been touched up by “someone who had made a hash of it”, setting the bar quite high for GoodGymmers!

We were given creative responsibility for choosing (or mixing!) from the paints available and didn’t expect the biggest challenge to be getting the lids off - Dave committed a good 30 minutes to his favourite tin and was rewarded with a fabulous matt dark blue for the big wall whilst Nadia found a lovely lively green for her first ever decorating.

Three hours in, we had a good first coat (and rollers that worked plus paint brushes that almost did) and a lot of chat completed 😀