Sing a song of GoodGym A cupboard full of ducks Four-and-twenty steel bars Have us in a state of flux

Sort out some lost clothing Give bits to charity Not the stash of undies, though That's destined for the bin

With the lurgy taking out several GoodGymers this week, it was a motley crew of three who turned up for our first visit to The Lenton Centre. We were greeted by Angela who led us down to the basement and showed us around.

Our first job was sorting out a few bin bags of unclaimed lost property to figure out what could be donated and what had to be ditched. It turns out that more people than you'd think leave their swimmers and towels behind after a dip in the pool, and more than a fair few apparently went home commando. Once they were sorted, Tom nipped down the road to put the donatables in a BHF bin down the road, while Leah and Heidi located the outside bin for the remainder.

Next, we were off to another room of the basement to put together a shelving unit that had clearly been waiting a while for assembly. With a combination of contortion, logic and brute strength (and a couple of random gardening tools and keys), we managed to get it together and just about stable. It's currently being guarded by the giant duck full of his own plastic brethren we found in a cupboard.

Finally, we took a bit more rubbish and recycling out to the bins before heading our separate ways.

There's plenty more for us to do there, can't wait to go back!

it was a return visit to The Place Sherwood for 10 intrepid Goodgymers to apply a second coat to the walls ( though it was so toasty inside no second coats were needed to be worn!) and smash through our January Challenge pledge! After Tom and Nigel wrestled the ladder upstairs it was brushes and rollers at the ready as we got stuck in. We had great encouragement from our task owner Rachel who made sure we were fuelled up with plenty of hot chocolate and biscuits. Proving that many hands make light work Giovanna (making her Goodgym debut - welcome), Peter, Leah, Heidi, Aj, Florence, Khiltee and Phil soon had that second coat of paint on leaving enough time for Matt to set to with the filler. With still more to do it looks like we will be back but for now it’s in with tomorrow’s task, the last of the January Challenge!

I don't think we've ever had this many people attend a session! An amazing FOURTEEN of us descended on Mark at The Meadows Food Bank for an evening of lifting, sorting and cleaning. As usual, he'd come up with a nice big list of things for us to do, which we absolutely smashed (if I do say so myself).

Newcomers Heidi, Alex and Phil joined our old hands Hannah, Florence and Khiltee for the biggest job of the night – sorting piles and piles of clothing donations to find wintery clothes suitable to give out to the food bank's service users in the near future and get everything else ready to be passed on to charity shops to raise more funds.

Meanwhile, Peter, Matt, Aj and another newcomer, Neil, were on the lifting and shifting, moving bags out to Mark's car and bringing stock down from upstairs to top up the shelves.

Nigel and Leah were on sweeping and hoovering duty all across the stockroom and the community cafe. I'd never thought about it before, but Henry the Hoover is wonderfully GoodGym colour-coded.

Finally, Rachel and Dayna were on bagging up more of the mini soaps and body washes. We still haven't got to the bottom of them, despite Matt's best efforts.

We just about had time for a group photo (minus Matt, sorry!) before heading our separate ways. Welcome to all our new members, hope to see you at another task soon!