Despite the violent swings between rain and hail earlier today, somehow it wasn't Wet Wet Wet when we got to the ICCA this week. It was Cold Cold Cold though.

We picked up the kit from our hosts and headed outside to carry on where we left off a few weeks ago.

This time we gave the railings a good rub down with some sandpaper to get rid of the worst of the flaking paint before forging forward along the railings.

The light aaaalmost lasted the whole of the task, and one passerby did offer us the flash from his phone towards the end.

Fingers a little frozen, we headed inside to warm up, and got a lovely serenade from Matt on his otamatone during photo time.

We teamed up with the Nottingham Clean Champions as part of the Great British Spring Clean.

Armed with a new set of litter pickers provided by the Council team, we split up and covered quite a big area following the side streets off Hucknall Road.

Matt was, as always, highly committed to getting every last piece of rubbish (check out the pics) and I think gets to claim victory in the "weirdest find" competition for the bra and some, err, questionable-looking spray cans. Hopefully Volume 2 of the mix CD we found was better received than Volume 1 presumably was.

Welcome to Shauna and Annie who joined us for their first tasks!

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!

Our latest task took us back to the Edwards Lane community Centre for the session we’d postponed from January due to illness.

We welcomed Caroline and Charlie back for their second GoodGym tasks, and also Nat who hasn’t been for a while. Joined by Leah, Matt, Nigel and Rachel, the group met Hya on arrival who set us to work on….you guessed it….painting!

Painting seems to have been the theme of this autumn and winter for GoodGym Nottingham, kick starting with our last visit to Edwards Lane back in October when we painted the sports hall. Since then, we’ve refreshed and spruced up various walls and fences in the local area. No complaints though, the group seem in their happy place with brushes and rollers in hands and the conversation and banter flows aplenty during these kinds of tasks.

This time we had the convenient job of painting the ladies’ and accessible toilets at the community centre. We split into 2 teams – pink and blue - and got to work. After an hour, we’d managed to get a large chunk of both loos done and they were definitely looking brighter and fresher, though a second coat and some neatening up is needed. Feeling flushed with success, we piled into the accessible toilet for a quick group photo.

Although we were disappointed not to be able to finish the painting, we understand that Hya’s husband will be going in to pick up where we left. Hopefully we will be back soon to help out with more jobs around the Edwards Lane Community Centre and to admire the loos if we need to spend a penny!