Tonight we got to work tidying up the flower beds in the Rose Road car park. A lot of the plants were overgrown in the sensory garden, bindweed had taken over and rubbish had blown in off the street. We carefully pruned, pulled, picked and swept to leave the main flower bed looking much smarter and the parking spaces clear. I don't know about everyone else, but I worked so hard with the secateurs I got a blister!

Tonight we were in charge of cleaning and packing away all the things from the Colour Run the day before. We quickly got to work organising a box for resuable items, checking and refilling the "useful" event boxes, and wiping down the tables. Ashleigh upon discovering a wheel had broken on the trolley set out with great determination to fix it. It was no easy feat and she had to call Lucy in as reinforcements. After some work with a hammer, a glue gun and some tape the wheel was back on. Unfortunately it did not pass the "Can you support a whole human" test. So they had to start all over again! I can confirm the wheel is now back on but we wouldn't recommend an heavy loads at the front of the trolley or any bumpy ground!

I started off on car park marshalling while Ashleigh helped on registration for runners and walkers. It wasn’t long before it was time to head to our colour stations ready for the start. I jumped at the chance to be plant station 1 which meant we got to throw paint not once, not twice, but three times as it was two laps and we then moved to the finish arch. Now it took a bit of practise to see how much paint was needed per cup to get the best paint to people ratio. There were definitely some times with too much paint or person! I ended up chief paint police on the finish as we descended into anarchy with children pinching the paint. I had to ration it out to make sure we had enough left for all the finishes. Ashleigh had no such problems though as they chucked all their paint on the first lap. Job done!! We had so much fun and so did the participants. Some of them went for extra laps as they were having so much fun. We can’t wait for this event to come around again. It wasn’t long before it was all over and we were tidying up and trying to get ourselves back to our usual colour!

This evening we decided jobs based on who looked like they were dressed for winter and summer! People looking well wrapped with assigned car washing duties while the short wearers, ouchie hand person and a birthday Wilson went up to the loft. In the loft we split into a painting team and a t-shirt sorting team. The t-shirt cupboard was the Mary Poppins bag of cupboards with seemingly endless varieties of t-shirts to organise. The painters were stuck with other quandaries such as how to get a very stuck sticky label off and how to paint both sides in one evening. We just about got everything folded up and and base coated in time. The beginnings of a human fruit machine ready for the summer events!

Wishing a big Happy Birthday to Wilson and Leszek

We were delighted to have our first Monday evening session at Rose Road in in the daylight which made cleaning the outreach vehicles much easier. You could really see the sparkle! We split into two teams to get the interior and exterior of three vans done in no time at all. Welcome to S who did a great job on vacuuming duties. We hope to see you again soon.

Tonight we were tasked with helping to tidy up the supplies in the fund raising section of the loft and creating an inventory for raffle prizes/donations. First of all we had to divide into Spreadsheeters and Non-spreadsheeters! Those with IT skills set to work listing the inventory while those with a bit less IT skills begun sorting through the stationary and craft supplies. We think we came up with some logical yet novel categories. Everyone will know where to go now to find "Pegs + sticks" and "Feathers + Pom Poms + foam"! We look forward to planning our Rose Road session for next month where we will have finally made it back to lighter evenings!