Wednesday 22nd March 2023
Report written by James Smith
This evening we met three Peter's to help out in the Hope in Community charity shop. Tall Peter and Small Peter were tonight joined by Big Peter, making up a terrific trio of Peters. We had our own topnotch trio though, made up of Cracking Kirsty , Jolly James and Daring Daniel.
Our task for the night was to move goods from the lock-up premises, near the old BCDP location, down the road to the Hope in Community charity shop. We only had one set of keys for the storage location so there had to be someone minding the building at all times, and we rotated who held this role. There were lots of bags of donated clothes in bin bags to be ferried down, large boxes full of disposable cups and many, many boxes full of Old Spice shower gel!. Most of the clothes were in very thin and weak bin bags, which Kirsty found out first hand when crossing a road with some full bags; the bags split half-way across said road and the clothes within spilled out onto the asphalt below. Thankfully there were no cars coming and James was nearby carrying a box of cups, able to offer assistance. Some of the fallen clothes were placed on top of James' box and the rest were safely carried by clothes horse Kirsty! Meanwhile Daniel was busy lugging crates of shower gel down the hill, and James was transporting boxes of cups with bags of clothes hung beneath. It was hard to see where to walk whilst carrying a huge box of cups so it was best practice to walk with someone else, especially because their were scaffolding poles to navigate, a busy road to cross, and quite a few slightly tipsy Irish people in skirmishes around the pub we had to walk past, still on the go from St Patrick's day it seemed. Some of them even tried to force their way into the charity shop, hence the need to keep doors locked and a Peter inside. Undeterred however we carried on carrying, even running back up the hill after delivering goods down it, eager to save time and get some hill reps in too!
The Spice Routes were perilous, but we ran through ramshackle ramparts and past treacherous taverns safely with our trolleys of exotic Old Spice!
It was such a big job tonight that we stayed slightly later than usual (with everyone's agreement) and it was decided to forgo the exercise session that I had planned for afterwards as we were doing a lot already- the heavy lifting, trolley pulling, trolley pushing, trolley steering, bin bag dropping, car avoiding, bin bag carrying, crate filling, crate carrying, hill running and box unpacking being more than enough exertion for the night.
We had managed to get a whole side of the shop cleared and moved in the extended time that we had been there. I'm always amazed by how much GoodGym Barnsley can get done in a relatively short space of time! The 'after' photo doesn't quite show all we did, as we decided to shift the last few crates too; never leave a job half finished... apart from sometimes!
With the job well done, we said our goodbyes to the now two Peter's (we had mislaid one of them during the course of the evening) and headed back to Glasshouse for a debrief and a stretch off.
Great job GoodGymers and the three Peters!
We’re a local community group based in Barnsley, South Yorkshire and we aim to help people get more involved with their local community. We were founded in September 2017 by Peter Robertshaw, who wanted to help make a difference in the local area. He has since recruited several volunteers who help with every aspect of the running from fundraising to the behind the scenes admin that needs to be done.
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