We were back at the ICCA tonight for some more railing painting.

It started a little differently, though, with Leah and Sarah meeting up for dinner at the ICCA's Dosti Club. Fully carb-loaded on noodles, chips and rice, plus a bit of mango kulfi where Natalie got in on the action, we headed down to get painting.

Charlie welcomed first-timer Jen, and we unpacked the kit. Leah finished off a tiny bit of the fiddly double gate we didn't get to last time while everyone else got cracking on the next section. We managed to get a decent chunk done in an hour, but we're seriously considering a hack Sarah had seen where you apply the paint with socks to get more done with a swipe.

So if you're joining us for one of these sometime soon, maybe raid your sock drawer on the way!

Wooooah, we're (roughly) halfway there! Woooooooooooooah! And paint is in our haaaair!

This week we were tackling the most intricate part of the ICCA's railings so far – the double gate!

We were wondering what the letters in the middle of each gate were and I'm pleased to tell you that I found out. The building was originally a factory for Thomas Forman and Sons – apparently inspired in design by Buckingham Palace. Every day's a school day.

I'm not sure if it was the heat making it super gloopy or what, but the paint was still as unwieldy as it was back in the dark and windy nights we were here in the winter and spring, so we all came home sporting various levels of paint coverage ourselves. Rachel had to bathe her legs in white spirit to get hers off!

We also welcomed back Florence and Elspeth after some time away. Hopefully see you all again soon!

This week saw us return to the Meadows Food Bank. Did you know it was the venue for GoodGym Nottingham's first "proper" task nearly three years ago? Leah, Peter and Rachel were all there for it, and by the way the tasks fell, it turned out to be the venue for Leah's 100th this week. Most serendipitous!

We met up with Mark as usual on arrival who had plenty for us to get stuck into.

Leah and Peter summoned up their inner Dale Wintons for a round of Supermarket Sweep, boxing up two-person packages ready to be bagged and sent home with service users in the coming days. Meanwhile, Khiltee, Nigel and Florence were on clothes duty, hanging things up on rails and making it look a lot nicer. Matt, Sarah and Charlie were bagging up toiletry packs (somehow that stock of mini soaps is still going).

Finally, it was all hands on deck sorting out the dried pasta stocks, making sure everything went in the right date order so the older stuff gets distributed first.

We just had time to gobble a few celebratory muffins and flapjacks before heading our separate ways.

No task next week, but we're back at Sherwood Community Centre on 3 June!

For this week’s task we returned to the Sherwood Community Centre where our host, Louise, always has a range of fun jobs for us. However, before we started work, we had another important job to do…have a photoshoot!

We were joined by two photography students, Damon and Deanna, from Nottingham College who are working on a project about sustainability. They wanted to take a few snaps of us before the task, so the Nottingham Taskforce - Leah, Peter and Rachel - pulled out their best litter picking poses in the woods to get the shots that were needed.

Once everyone else arrived, we set to work in and around the centre. Peter, Shauna, Annie and Jo were out in the grounds weeding some of the beds and clearing leaves. Jo was joining us from Exeter where she is a GoodGym regular, so it was lovely to have a tourist in our midst.

Inside, Charlie, Matt and Nat did a bit of moving and shifting, and also built a shelf/trolley contraption for extra storage in one of the cupboards. After this, Matt had the important job of mopping all the signs in and around the carpark to remove all the dirt, bird mess and general muck that was covering them.

Finally, Khiltee, Leah and Rachel returned to the basement to carry on with some of the painting that we had been working on over recent weeks and months.

After an hour, we had a photo with one of Matt’s freshly mopped signs and went on our way.

Damon and Deanna's photography project will be on show at the Surface Gallery in Nottingham very soon, and we hope to go along to check out our photos and learn more about sustainability projects in the city.