This was GoodGym's first time for helping out at a High Town Community even, and there were a few teething troubles. Gill and Ruth arrived in good time at the school, eager to get stuck into the task. However the enthusiasm soon waned when we were told by the Community Liaison person that we couldn't start setting u the hall for the Christmas Market until after the children's lunches had finished. We'd been asked to arrive ready to start at 1 pm but we would have to hang around until after 1:45 before we could get started.

GoodGymers are by nature active people, so sitting around in an overly hot school room wasn't the best start to the task, although it did give us a chance to get to know our newest member Mohammad.

Once the children had finished in the hall, we took the lead in clearing up - Tigger grabbed the broom from an unsuspecting dinner supervisor and got stuck into sweeping up the debris left from school dinners - hundred and thousands, squashed fish fingers and assorted crumbs. While this was done the rest of us started stacking the chairs and collapsing the tables that were not needed. We had been given a carefully planned map of the hall and were soon shifting things around to match the plan. It soon became apparent that the plan was a little "organic" so we needed to second guess what was in the minds of the organisers - it's a good job that one of our superpowers is telepathy!!! It didn't take us long to get the tables positioned correctly and labelled , ready for the stall holders.

Next we started clearing furniture from the main corridor and getting more tables ready for some additional stall holders. Musa , Yasin, Benjamin and Gill made a great job of getting the tombola ready. The teachers were super impressed with our efficiency. Meanwhile Tigger had identified that as the stall holders were arriving many of them needed support bringing their boxes of goodies in from the car park and was soon detailing us to help. Going outside the school with a subteam at such a pace I could only get a photograph of their backs, as they went to help bring in boxes of festive table arrangements and wreaths.

By the time our work (alongside other volunteers) was ended the hall looked fabulous with a great variety of different stalls and games, and there was a real buzz about the place. The head teacher was so thankful for all our help, and we slipped away leaving the parents and children to enjoy the Christmas Market (also abandoning Benjamin, who hadn't realised that we had gone - apologies, especially as this was only your second task).

We are hopeful that this might be the start of a new GoodGYm parttnership with the school and look forward to getting involved in other events in the coming year.

6 of Luton's Goodgym elite had 2 tasks to do yesterday evening, so we split up into a walking group and a running group to tackle them.

Our walkers set off to our first task at Penrose roots to recovery garden, where they met with Pete, who, after providing gloves and tools, got team 1 hard at it weeding one of the vegetable patches.

Our running team set off slightly later after having a quick warm-up, which included running up and down the town hall steps a few times. The runners were headed to Trinity Community Centre to help maintain their garden and play area but unfortunately the task leader was unable to open up for the team, so they headed back to meet up with the walkers at Penrose. Turned out being a slightly longer first leg than anticipated.

After some digging, weeding, and tipping, and before heading back to town, I took a little walk around the garden with Pete the task leader to look at the fantastic veggies they've grown. They have an amazing variety, including squash, beetroots, brassicas, onions, and potatoes, to name just a few, and it great to know our efforts have supported this. Team photo taken, we called it a night and headed home.