We were asked to help Ms Y cut back her blackberry bush to maintain her tenancy. When I arrived Miriam and Ms Y were already chatting away, Ms Y was telling Miriam all about the local seagull, Sammy, who comes to visit her twice a day. After short introductions, and a warning it was "a big job", we headed into the back garden where Ms Y announced "Welcome to the jungle!".

The bramble had indeed taken over the majority of the right hand side of the garden. After a super quick pow wow on approach ("I think we just dive in"), we did just that. Miriam took one side of the garden and I took the other. In the distance and mostly hidden by bramble we could see Ms Y's Greenhouse - she wanted to be able to access it again to fix a tear in the roof so it remains waterproof.

I'll be honest, we're generally super efficient at GoodGym but I wasn't holding out much hope for 2 of us being able to get rid of all that bramble in 90 mins. I thought we'd make a really good stab of it, get a good dent gone, but potentially have to report to the referrer that more help was needed. Nonetheless, we cracked on and started to do what we could.

It was slow going work. The brambles were so twisted, gnarly and tough it took a long time to make any headway. We could both completely see how they're apparently carnivorous plants - we were getting battered! They kept attaching themselves to my shirt, shoes, leggings, skin... Miriam's excellent new gardening gloves made her feel invincible and she expertly whipped through the bramble, but as good as the gloves are, they can only help with what they cover, and her upper arms were super scratched.

Ms Y wouldn't even entertain the idea of sitting down and not helping us. Although not steady on her feet, she cut through the parts we'd hacked and made it easier to bag them up, helping us throughout the whole task. As she helped, she chatted, and told us all about the numerous cats who come into her garden (some hers, such as Guinness, who we met, some not hers), the pigeon who she feeds, and all the animals she's looked after over the years. It was lovely to hear how she has such a way with animals. The time flew as we chatted away, and before I knew it - the greenhouse was in reach! Buoyed by the tangible progress we'd made, we were determined to get through the last sections and spent the last half an hour clearing the way to the greenhouse with Miriam singlehandedly raising a forest of brambles over her head to take out to the green waste pile.

I was so glad Miriam remembered to get a 'before' picture to capture the difference. It really felt like a very good job well done and super valuable for Ms Y, who can now access her garden, the greenhouse, and keep on top of the garden before it becomes overgrown again. Ms Y clearly loves her outside areas and puts lots of love and thought into them, this was a good example of a one-off task which is really beneficial to help her get on top of it so she can now continue to maintain it.

I chose the pun because I was near Crosby beach, home to the Anthony Gormley statues called Another Place but also I spent most of this session putting things in another place! Mr and Mrs P were frustrated that they had so much they wanted to do in their garden. I could tell from first sight that they really loved spending time there as at first sight I was at a loss as to what to do because it looked immaculate; a beautifully kept lawn, beautiful bushes and shrubs and a stunning water feature in the centre. Mrs P said she’d like the shrubs tidied on the right hand side and the weeds removed from the paving in the back and front but Mr P, who stayed with me, had other ideas. He had a multitude of pot plants on a shelf in his shed that he wanted taken out and put across the other side of the garden on the patio. There were lots of Aloe Vera, such a prolific plant, I nearly named this report ‘Ello ‘ello aloe. I said I had loads of Aloe Vera in my house that thrived in the shade so we found a shady spot for these plants. Mr P was suprised how many pots there were in the shed as I made about 12 trips back and forth with the plants. I weeded the gravel around a stone feature on the patio and then Mr P got me looking through his lock ups behind the shed for hoses which turned into a deep dive of what exactly was in the lock ups. I unpacked everything and then we sorted through what should stay out, what was rubbish and what could go back in. I placed all the items that we’d taken out either in his shed or stacked up in front of the shed. Mrs P asked if I could sweep under the table before I left, I had to oblige as her wishes had largely gone unfulfilled. I said that I would return to tackle those weeds on the patio and out the front and also have a go at weeding the shrubs next time.

It was the annual Choir With No Name summer concert at the Everyman theatre on Hope Street. Two Goodgymmers Steph and Steph were performing with the choir and our Area Activator Ema, who is also manager of the choir was in attendance which was a real treat for the choir and us Goodgymmers because we have really missed her while she has been ill. Aatefa, Dina, Suren, Liam, Heetu, Sallyann and myself met with Kate from Choir With No Name who explained our role in selling merch, signing people up as fans and collecting donations.

To be honest we were well and truly on it, we love being a part of this event so we knew the drill. The puns on the merch were so fantastic we knicked one for the title of this report. All song lyric puns, you had tea towels ‘Never gonna wash you up’ (Rick Astley) ‘Hate to say I toweled you so’ (The Hives) and tote bags with ‘Bag to life, bag to reality’ (Soul II soul). Sallyann was please that a bag with ‘Bag a do do do’ (Black Lace) sold as it was the last one and she hated for it to be lonely.

The concert was typically phenomenal, our Steph put in a fantastic solo in a Chapel Roan medley and Heetu commented that her favourite song was their rendition of Kate Bush’s ‘Running up that hill’ it was amazing.

A really special part of the concert was special guest, Scouse poet, Joseph Roberts who puts his poems to music. The CWNN provided a haunting backing vocal to his poem about mental health called ‘luggage’. It was stunning. There was a moving testimony from one of the choir members called Skye who spoke about grief and surviving suicidal thoughts and how she had found a home in the choir. It was so moving and definitely moved the audience.

The audience showed incredible generosity in the bucket donations and merch sales. We think that merch sales might be the most successful we’ve ever known with the new tea towels proving particularly popular.

Well done to the Stephs and so wonderful to see Ema, we all left on a high. Special shout out to Aatefa and Sallyann who did the TRIO on this day… parkrun in the morning, Everton Park Games in the afternoon and CWNN concert in the evening, it was an epic day for them.

Goodgym Saturdays are the best!

Everton park is on a site that used to be high rise social housing and jn the 1970s and 80s that was demolished and a beautiful park was created, a stunning green space with activity areas for locals to enjoy. It is widely known in Liverpool for having one of the best views of the city. Friends of Everton Park maintain the large park and attend to the community gardens. John is our main point of contact and he was the brains behind their new initiative, an Everton Park games. He told us that his inspiration for the games was going to Scotland and seeing the Highland Games that are enjoyed by local communities there. They have assault courses where competitors toss hay bails and build fences. A relay race filled with challenging activities. So this is what John set about creating. A space on the hill was allocated and John got a track painted onto the grass.

The course included passing through hoops, running backwards with heavy bags, rolling a large tube up the hill, constructing a jigsaw puzzle, looping rope onto cones, manoeuvring a wheelbarrow through a line of poles and finally throwing the heavy bag into a hoop.

Unfortunately no one had signed up to this first event but that was ok, in fact it was a perfect opportunity to test run the event and iron out any problems before holding the event again at a later date. After the intense heat some rainfall was welcome, Sallyann, Heetu, myself, Vikky, Aatefa and Nasser all pitched in to help set up and dismantle the course. We then ran the course with varying levels of success! It was incredibly fun with just a few teething issues that we discussed with John and the other volunteers at the end so that the next event could be a success.

The course created some fun inter-generational discussion with the older volunteers comparing the course to the hit 80s phenomenon ‘It’s a Knockout’ and slightly younger volunteers referencing 90s show ‘The Krypton Factor’ still both vintage references, clearly this format needs a reboot for the 21st century! Thanks John and everyone for a really fun day.

Bekah and I arrived promptly to Mrs M’s on this sweltering day. When we met Mrs M she directed us to the two fridges in her spare room. We got cracking straight away. She needed them put in her front yard so that they could be collected by bulky bob’s tomorrow. One was a table top fridge which we managed with ease and the other was a much bigger fridge freezer which we just about manoeuvred around the corners and out of the door, that one was pretty heavy. The fridge freezer had leaked a bit across the floor so we wiped that up with kitchen roll for Mrs M so that she wouldn’t slip. Within 10mins we were done and Mrs M remarked that we were super fast and efficient which is always nice to hear. Bekah and I were free to enjoy the sun and look forward to this evening’s England semi-final World Cup game against Argentina. Come on England!!

Sophie, Vikky and Aatefa ran to Princes park from Hope Street when the temperature was still very warm. Laura, Steph and I were with Ali, a Friend of Princes Park helping him get the wheelbarrows, watering cans and the water butt on wheels out of the lock up. Katy from Friends of Princes Park gave us some instruction on what we were going to do today; water some of the trees that were earmarked for watering in the park. Apparently a new tree, up to two years old, needs a minute of watering every few days as it has not yet developed a deep root system that can access lower ground water. Dina and Ellie joined us before we started wheeling our water collectors down to the lakeside. There we formed a human chain, passing watering cans along to fill up the water butt and the cans, it was a workout! Some twisting and lifting. Then we made our way to the new trees that needed watering. They were each labelled and we marked each label as we watered so that we knew which ones had been done. Liam, Tsitsi and Craig joined the group just in time to see the Cinnabar moth caterpillar on a piece of grass. It was black and yellow striped, the nature signal for ‘don’t eat me, I am dangerous’ but there was nothing dangerous about this caterpillar except that they were munching all the leaves on our baby trees. We watered plum trees, cherry trees, oaks and horse chestnut trees. Ali asked us to water a few extras that weren’t marked just because he liked them which was very sweet and a sign of how much he cares for the park, developing fondness for the trees. I eyed up a fantastic blackberry picking location that I will definitely be returning to in a week or so when the berries have ripened so I can forage a few to have in my porridge. We definitely got our lifting exercise in on this task and really enjoyed the beauty of the park on this warm sunny evening. Katy told us about the Friends of Princes park anniversary event that is happening in a few weeks so many of us agreed that we would love to return for that.