Another lovely evening down at Cody Dock and a very warm welcome to Claudia, joining the Newham clan for the first time. Welcome back David and Kiran for your second session on the pontoon (let us know once you’ve decided where your tats are going to go) and also to Rosie, who we hadn’t seen for a little while, cycling down the Lea to join us, great to see you again.

Although we love a bit of watering, recent downpours have provided some much needed relief for all the vegetation at Cody Dock and we could focus on our mini-project to restore 2 sections of pontoon frames. The team had made a start on this last week, scrubbing down one of the sections and giving it a coat of vactan. (Vactan is of course a rust converter that neutralises the corrosion by converting the rust into a metallo-organic complex which passivates the surface… thanks Google.) With one of the sections already vactanned, half of us set about painting it, while the other half had the messier task of prepping the other section and we’ll hopefully be able to complete the job next week.

The pontoons, once finished, will help with the wider regeneration plans to restore the brickwork and create a dry dock facility. Volunteers are also playing a large part in doing this via their regular sessions – loads more detail on the Cody Dock website if any of you folks are ever up for learning some new skills! Last time I joined one of these, they let me loose with an angle grinder, highly recommended. Will be great to see how it all turns out.

Today was a return trip to Mr P’s. Whilst this lovely warm weather has been wonderful, it has resulted in some of those pesky weeds that Hilary tackled last time coming back to join in the fun. Rosie (on her debut mission) helped Hilary to get rid of as many of these weeds as possible whilst trying to re-home many of the snails and spiders in the process. Graham got back to getting the last of the bricks and tiles out and they all used some team work to remove the large logs from the middle of the garden. Mr P was very grateful and talked to us about his plans for the garden now that it is clearer to pave it and make it much more manageable and usable for him and his friends and family.