Whoop whoop! Monsterous Mike did the double tonight with his 50th Good Deed and his first outing as run leader - and on a night where we had to run through “Murder Alley”! The unenviable job of backmarker went to Helen, and Sandy Sam led the Walkie Talkies.

Despite having a 100% success record (so far!) of us all making it out alive, it’s a brave task-force team that takes on this particular responsibility at Halloween!

A few of us had raided the dressing up box (or the rather empty!) supermarket shelves for last minute fancy dress. So fortunately we only had a short walk / run to the Baker’s Café at the Railway Village. The Baker’s has an interesting history! It was opened in the 1840s as a bakery serving the railway village workers and later a pub. It’s now run as a social enterprise – a lovely café serving yummy food and drinks to the local community. Still to come in its exciting history is the GoodGym Swindon Christmas (but not actually anywhere near Christmas!) knees up.

Hannah had a variety of tasks lined up for us – weeding and scooping up leaves outside and in the surrounding area, cleaning the floors in the café and cleaning windows. The café has a food hygiene rating of a 5 – so no pressure then!

The following account of proceedings is to be imagined in the voice of Ray Parker Junior and to the Ghostbusters soundtrack, if you will. I take no responsibility for poor grammar – that’s song lyrics for you!

If you need some help in your neighbourhood

Who you gonna call? GoodGymers!

We might seem strange

But here to do some good

Who you gonna call? GoodGymers!

We ain't afraid of no walks

We ain't afraid of no runs

If the weeds you have, are out of control

Who you gonna call? GoodGymers!

Remove without a trace

That’s our goal

Who you gonna call? GoodGymers!

We ain't afraid of no slime

We ain't afraid of no slugs (well maybe just a little bit!)

Who you gonna call? GoodGymers!

Windows need a shine?

That task is mine!

So call GoodGymers

We ain't afraid of no mops

We hear the floor needs a clean

We ain't afraid of no brooms

(high pitched for this bit!) Yeah yeah yeah yeah

Who ya gonna call? GoodGymers!

If you need good deeds near a freaky “Murder Alley”

You better call, GoodGymers!

Lemme tell ya something, GoodGyming makes us feel good

We ain't afraid of murders

We ain't afraid of alleys

Who ya gonna call? GoodGymers

I can't hear you

Who ya gonna call? GoodGymers!

Louder...

GoodGymers!

We had a quick huddle at the end for a prize giving for costumes. Rosettes were awarded to Hocus Pocus Kirsty for best overall costume, Devilish Charles for Scariest Costume, and Puffy Pumpkin Tracey for Cutest Costume.

On the way back we all made it through Murder Alley, without event. Except for Safety First Simon being heard to say “stop pinging my bra strap!” We would have stopped to enquire why he was wearing a bra and who was pinging it but we all know loitering would have led to imminent death so we pretended we hadn’t heard and carried on running!

All done with our Tricks, we headed back into base for coffee and Treats!

Next week’s task is a very special one! We will be running approximately 9km in total to Prince Rupert Court in Freshbrook and back, to play Just Bowl, socialise and eat cake (!) with our friends there, including the wonderful Betty from Margaret Matthews Court. We have been to Prince Rupert Court before; in March and June, to do some gardening, and the residents enjoyed our company so much, they have asked us to go back! The residents, who are 55+ years and have physical disabilities, can often go for long periods of time without friends or family visiting, and so really do appreciate our visits and the company that we provide. Be sure to sign up here

We welcomed back Sharon who has not been able to join us for a while due to injury. Rather than our usual fact-based intro, we had a little maths test counting up only in prime numbers. Turns out we had 41 runners not 14.

A short 2k run to the task meant that we arrived before it got too dark but not before it started to rain. Thankfully it wasn’t as heavy as our last visit here in July, which warranted a sailing based pun-report. Also Dominique saw us coming and had the doors open quickly to get us inside. She explained how much the residents enjoyed our last visit but unfortunately many of them were ill at the moment and could not join us this time. Perhaps this why the “tea trolley of joy” also did not make an appearance?!

Three areas were tackled, two of which required some rose trimming. You would think that most Swindon GG Runners would be experts in rose trimming by now, but just to be safe we set two rose trimming supervisors Tracy and Jo. Some of the rose bushes required climbing into the flower bed which meant roses got where they weren’t meant to:

“I’ve got a rose thorn up my ass” (anon)

The de-weeding didn’t take too long and we finished with planting daffodils and tulips. Unfortunately the GG flowers planted last time had been instantly attacked by squirrels so has now turned in to a single G.

Given we had time to spare on the way back we took a detour to find “tappy boxes” (Beat the Street). The Run Leader would have fully prepped the route and the box locations if it was not for a bicycle malfunction on the recce. In the end it got a bit too dark and rainy and we gravitated back to the café for indoor based hot drink consumption training.

The next two tasks are for Swindon Night Shelter:

• A Community Mission on Saturday; we will be heading to their new warehouse for some serious sorting! It's one not to be missed and we need YOUR help! For more info and to sign up; check it out here!

• And then a 'Hump and Dump' task at the most welcoming Haven Day Centre next Tuesday - sign up here today!

THE WEEK’S HEROES

• This week was Simon L’s first Group Run as Run Leader. Congratulations Simon!

• We welcomed newcomer Ade, thanks for joining us!

• Thanks also to returners, Swindon parkrun legend Jo, and Ciaran!

• Congratulations to The Trainer Emma for reaching 50 Good Deeds

….I’m not missing anything, am I? OH YES, massive congratulations to Andrew for his 50 Good Deeds! Somehow his black top seemed to arrive early… perhaps it arrived in a bin bag?!

So what did the friendly Jane from Ferndale Primary School have in store for us when we got there? There were three tasks to get our teeth into. Splitting out into groups, you were either part of…

THE STONERS

We set off on a monumental task of moving the big stone. Like a rolling stone that gathers no moss, thinking it would be a big job, 3 of us heaved and we shoved the stone into the middle of the tipi area of the playground. 5 minutes later… before the walking group had even arrived…the stone had been successfully shifted!

THE SANDERS

The sanders were shifting sand from what seemed the furthest most point in the school grounds to the sandpit surrounding a pirate ship. Armed with wheelbarrows, big and small, spades and enthusiasm, we shovelled, swept and sanded up a storm around the ship. Why are pirates called pirates? Because they arrrrrgh!

OR THE SORTERS

These sorters were weeding, forking, sweeping, clearing leaves, and tidying up while having a good natter. A key duty in this task was sweeping AstroTurf, and debating the merits of fake grass over real grass. Is the fake grass jealous of the real grass’ ability to grow? Who knows?! Before we knew it, we only had five minutes left! We gathered for a group photo under the tree, and then said our goodbyes to Jane and the other Ferndalers (including two children cycling along rocking out to Bon Jovi!), and then we were off back to the Oasis for coffee and a chat. We’ve been to Ferndale Primary School a couple of times before, and we’re really pleased it’s one of the sites we can offer a walking group to so more people can get involved with GoodGym goodness.

Know someone new to running, looking for a new way to exercise or injured? Tell them to get involved with our next walking group!

Interested in more GoodGym goodies? Will we ever see Andrew again now he has his black shirt? Find out more:

• This Saturday, Swindon parkrun is cancelled, but instead we’ll be taking over a paint station at Prospect’s Run the Rainbow… most of us will be at the red station, but will there be a black station?! Be in it to find out!

• It’s GoodGym’s 10th anniversary this month and next Tuesday we’re celebrating by helping with Swindon Women’s Aid Refuge. A new task location for lifting, shifting and cleaning. Maybe we’ll have something special to celebrate the occasion? Sign up here!

• GoodGym’s also organising it’s biggest ever day of Community Missions on #GGSuperSaturday 21st September to celebrate the big ten. We’ll be tidying up at St. Mary’s Church, Lydiard Tregoze, straight after parkrun. Get involved!

• We’re also looking to grow missions in the town to help older people with one-off tasks, and coach runs to help combat loneliness and social isolation. Interested in more info? Check out the links, or speak to the Task Force.

This week’s getting-to-know-you question turned out to be a real conundrum for us all, the “young ones” and the young at heart – what is our favourite Cliff Richard song?! This was harder than it may seem, as most of us had not heard of Cliff Richard or his antics on a big red bus and the connection to tonight’s task was somewhat lost! But we persevered and were soon splitting into Speedies led by Emma and backmarked by Paul, and the Steadies led by run leader Charles and backmarked by Jo.

For this week’s task we were headed to The Big Yellow Bus project. The project was launched by Gerry Watkins in 2017 and is run by volunteers of the community for the community and is aimed at tacking homelessness by converting double decker buses that can accommodate people overnight. This is the second local bus, the first one already up and running in nearby Cirencester. This was a slightly cooler evening and it’s not hard to see why there is such a drive to get the bus up and running for the winter months when it is particularly hard for those without a home.

We were met there by Jason, and Hannah who probably has the most epic story about how she broke her toe that has ever been told… but not for here!

Run leader Charles had visited the bus the day before and we’ll take his word for it that it had been transformed from its previous white to the lovely canary yellow colour that greeted us when we arrived! So we lined up for our group shot in front of one of the best photo backdrops we’ve had so far. We had to try really hard not to lean against it as the paint was still a bit damp! Stuart was particularly worried about getting yellow paint on his shiny new black GoodGym shirt. But not to fear, GoodGym Swindon number one fan Jo’s mum is always on hand for paint removing tips!

Our mission was to clean the inside of the bus which is in the process of being converted into a living and sleeping space. Downstairs there is a seating area, wood burner and cooking facilities and upstairs there are 9 sleeping areas. So we set to work with cloths and brooms and sprays and Henry the Hoover. This was one of the more challenging cleaning tasks we’ve had, not because the bus was particularly dirty, but the stairs and beds and doors all had to be navigated. It was nice to see that we’d left the bus looking a bit more shiny than when we’d arrived.

Oh, we do love a good photo at GoodGym Swindon and a few of us couldn’t resist sitting in the driver’s seat for a pose. Gina looked particularly happy to be at the big wheel of fun!

Gerry had us all captivated with his passion and energy for all things Big Yellow Bus Project. He can certainly draw a crowd and this will surely help him with his dream to get enough support to launch the bus this winter. As the time went on there were less and less people on the bus and more and more people listening to his master plan!! We wish him and his supporters lots of luck with this venture.

Next up in our calendar is Gardening at Ferndale Primary School. We will be walking and running approximately 3km in total to Ferndale Primary School and back, to help with a gardening task. The outdoor area is entirely managed by volunteers and they need some help with an ongoing garden project. We have been here before and a lot has been done so far but there is more to do, so don't delay, sign up here!.