A definite contender for world record for the quickest Goodgym task ever…! Paul, Charlie and Hannah joined Libby at the Living Well charity shop to shift some furniture from one half of the shop to the other. This is so that half of the new carpeting can be put in and keep the shop looking good to raise money for Living Well’s important food bank and other vital services. The whole task took under 10 minutes! Same time and place next week for the other half of the shop…

We stayed indoors on fireworks night, so the only bangs we heard in our task were the shuttering up of other shops in The Glades Shopping Centre as we worked after hours to brighten up Greener and Cleaner's unit with some white painting.

Tamsin first asked us to coat a sign board that had its fair share of scuffing. We got out the roller and brushes and made it look a lot smarter! Other painting tasks were to touch up walls where adhesive tak had taken off bits of paint, and the doors and door frames, which had only had one coat of paint to begin with. Finally, we coated a trolley for the sign boards in white too.

Linda did a cracking job of painting the sign board, and Hannah coated the door, with Louise covering the sign trolley beautifully. In between some cutting in, I helped Tamsin raise some bunting :)

We'll be back at Green and Cleaner in a couple of weeks for Christmas decorating - would be great to see you there!

This week's group run was in honour of This Girl Can's "Let's Lift the Curfew" campaign 🏃‍♀️, highlighting the inequality that women face as the long nights set in 🌃 when it comes to exercising and travelling in public places. It was great to see lots of women at the session and a couple of new and recent faces such as Annie!

We met at the Bridge House, introducing ourselves and answering this week's icebreaker question - what's your favourite journey in the dark? We had some great answers - Cat blew us away with her story and photos of flying through the Northern Lights - amazing! 😮

It was a long 3km run to the Dorset Road Allotments so we set off along the main road before busting the curfew by heading through Penge Recreation Ground, then across Penge towards Elmers End and the allotments.

This was Part 5 of our ongoing project to help break down an old chicken coop that's long been condemned, with the space planned to be added to the allotments so the local community can benefit. There were huge brambles to be cut, wire netting to be removed and weeds galore. With a large number of tools on hand there was something for everyone to do 😀

Clare and I helped removed the green waste in wheelbarrows while the rest of the team worked through to the back of the coop, scything away at the bramble jungle. With many hands we made a lot of progress in just 30 minutes 🏆

Our time up, it was back on the 3km jog to Bridge House. Huge well done to everyone who joined - it was so nice to hear comments like "I didn't know I could run this far!" and just goes to show the motivational power of social running 👊

Keep lifting the curfew by banding together to make the world safer at night 🙏

P.S. Men, GoodGym offer a short, online training slideshow to help you do your bit - find it here.

The rain held off just about long enough for us to get stuck in to our second task at Churchfields Recreation Ground this evening. We were met by the lovely Amanda (who brought snacks!) and set us to work sprucing up the area around Kendall Gate. The majority of us were pulling up weeds and neatening border edges while Stephen went to town with the loppers on some overgrown ivy. Meanwhile Catherine and Paul did a very professional (and rapid) job of painting over graffiti on fences at the entrance to the park.

Great work all!