A small but mighty team from GoodGym Crystal Palace headed over to Alexandra Rec tonight to help out Millie from the Friends of Cator Park and Alexandra Rec.

Our mission? To help prepare the railings around the playground for a fresh coat of paint by removing the old, flaky layers that had seen better days. Armed with wire brushes, safety goggles and plenty of elbow grease, we made decent progress and got a good arm workout in the process. Check out Mark's cool video of the task here!

Thanks to everyone who came out!

Bad jokes happen when you have a little bit of a sore throat in a vegetable garden, and you have really missed going out on a Goodgym community task!

We also had the privilege last night of having two James' and a Jami on the task, as well as me and Mark.

Arriving at the task after a chat about data and reporting (sorry James) we set about tidying the place up a bit. A lot of weeding, chatting about which weeds are actually good, or at least impressive in looks or resilience (hello bindweed). A lot of sweeping, jumping in weed/compost piles (Mark), and litterpicking.

All resulting in a much-improved space at the centre of the estate, and more of a clean slate for the summer. And soon we'll be back to do the fence painting when the weather's a bit better.

Well done team!

We kicked off the evening naming ourselves and expressing which form of art we would give a go if we could, from improv comedy to lino printing to songwriting. After a nice jog through Crystal Palace, admiring the newly regenerated Italian Terraces, we arrived back at the Paxton Centre for our second annual table tightening championships.

The Paxton Centre is an arts cafe/workshop space with a built in gallery. It's cool. They're also a non-profit. Super cool.

We upturned the tables, unscrewed the legs, tightened them up on the inside, rescrewed them on, and levelled them out with the bits at the bottom. I'm not sure who won the championship. Everyone I guess.

After that we took a photo on the stairs as if we're Blazin' Squad and set off on our merry way.

Nice one, team. 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Emma, Mark, and Catherine spent a few sunny hours back with the ace Fieldwork Project on Saturday, continuing to dig the trench for a French drain (see photos for progress!) and painting their lovely big table in the polytunnel. We also had a go at excavating a big bit of flint that is sticking out into the trench - it probably needs a bit more work but it had a good wobble by the time we finished up. Ever the wonderful hosts, the Fieldwork team then fed us with some phenomenal home-made chips and Shakshuka, shared more about their work with wool from the farm, and took us to meet Bobby and the other sheep who live there.