GoodGym Nottingham returned to the Bridgeway Hall this week. Usually we are working in the foodbank, but as the clocks have changed and the weather (apparently) more favourable, our task for this time was to help with some tidying in the garden area in preparation for the summer months.

As we all made our way to the task, we were subject to dark skies, rain and hail stones. Thankfully, by the time we arrived the sun was shining again as we met our host, Dave, who showed us what he wanted us to do.

Unfortunately, someone else had gone home with the key to the shed meaning we had limited tools and gardening gloves, but we made the best of what we had and most of the group – Khiltee, Nat, Leah, Lindsey, Peter and Rachel - spent the hour tackling the weeds in and between the raised beds.

Meanwhile, Dayna turned her attention to trimming the branches that were poking through the fence at the back of the yard, and Matt and Nigel put in some hard graft splitting up some wooden pallets, preserving as much of the wood as possible which will be repurposed as benches for the front of the food bank.

After an hour of physical work and, as usual, meaningful conversation covering running, modern languages, how to hoe and what a bat would look like in a bowler hat, we packed up and went on our merry way.

We wished a belated happy 50th GoodGym task to Matt who was already proudly wearing his black t-shirt. Also, a big shout out to Peter who is running the Manchester Marathon this coming weekend – good luck Peter!!

Did you hear the story of the bearded man who turned water into wine? Well, GoodGym Nottingham witnessed a similar miracle last night when our own bearded man, Matt, managed to turn black paint into white before our very eyes!

We were back at the Sherwood Community Centre with host, Louise, who always has a range of fun jobs for us to tackle. Some of us cracked on with painting the downstairs area, including painting over the very Easter-y yellow toilets and stairwell. Meanwhile, a few others popped off to move some chairs up to the art studio before playing paint Tetris putting tins of paint away in the cupboards up there. Once Tetris was complete, they joined the rest downstairs for painting.

Later in the hour, Matt and Nat also nipped back upstairs to help manoeuvre a cupboard which had been installed the wrong way around.

Now for the miracle…

On assessing the available white paint at the start of the evening, most of the group had written off a tub of bluey-black looking paint as unusable. But Matt, convinced the paint could still be saved, set about stirring and shaking it with great determination. Bit by bit the colour changed, and to everyone’s surprise, we had white paint again.

Not quite a miracle, but definitely a reminder that we still have a lot to learn about paint… and that Matt is not the sort of person who takes “no” for an answer.

Well done to this week’s volunteers: Leah, Nigel, Nat, Matt, Khiltee, Louise, Charlie and Rachel. Also, well done and welcome to new GoodGymers Willow and Sophie - we hope to see you again soon!

You can tell we've had one or two painting jobs this winter when GoodGym members are bringing their own overalls!

We were back at the Sherwood Community Centre this week to tackle jobs inside and out! Louise from the centre leda few of us down a labyrinth to apply some fresh white paint to whilst Matt, Natalie and Charlie went outside for some stealth gardening and leaf collection.

Great progress was made by both groups and Louise provided drinks to refresh after a good hour of work on the brushes and rollers.

We also welcomed Louise for her first GoodGym task, we hope you join us again soon!