Brown Books had been flooded out by faulty plumbing from the flat above and there was so much damage they needed to pack up the salvageable stock ready for a move to new premises next week. So of course GoodGym offered our services to help with the packing. We had no idea how many books there would be, and as we soon ran out of boxes, while Musa carried on packing with help from our ally Hussain, Gill and Omar took turns to go in search of more cardboard boxes: we begged them from other shops and even went diving into recycling bins to retrieve flattened boxes which were then reconstructed back at the shop. Laura joined us and was soon busy packing up great works of literature including a lot of play scripts.

2 and a half hours later, with a mountain of 📚 book boxes 📦 piled up in the centre of the shop, we’d had an intensive upper body workout. With no more boxes available the lights were switched off and Gill locked up

It was a nice afternoon for a stroll around the Stockwood Park area for two GoodGymers. We met at Lawn Path and discussed the task; Yazed had not done leafletting before and added the words “leaflet” and “flyer” two his understanding of English. We soon got into the swing of it, and were “leap frogging” along the road to get our bundles of leaflets posted in record timing. Several residents were keen to hear about the Lutn Literary Festival being sponsored by Browns Books. Everything went smoothly until towards the end, I went to post a leaflet in a post box on some very large sinister looking gates. Yazed had sensibly stayed well back while I nearly jumped out of my skin as the feet of two very large dogs came grabbing towards me from under the gate accompanied by some very loud barking. I can only apologise to Yazed that I may have added another word to his lexicon of English which will not be repeated here!

I may need to get a hodoie like Yazed’s but it would need to say Fear of Dog instead

This week the group gathered to let High Town residents know about the Luton Literature Book Festival.

Joined by first timer Justin we did our intros and warm up and then headed up to High Town, collected the leaflets and hit the streets.

Going door-to-door in a leapfrog style we delivered hundreds of leaflets, at least 600, in super quick time and made it to the pub before the rain got too bad, to receive our reward, a free round of drinks, a thank you from task owner Maz.

Thursday evening brought about a cheeky midweek community mission for 5 of Luton Goodgyms finest. The task was delivering leaflets to promote community events at a local community led book shop. The team got stuck in for an hour, posting to roughly 500 houses (could've been a few more). The team enjoyed a jog/brisk walk around the Hightown area of Luton as we delivered the notices, sufficient enough to work up a thirst as cheeky drink on the house at the local pub had been offered as treat for the hard work. Well done team, great effort 👌

We hit the streets of High Town this week with leaflets promoting the latest happenings at Brown Books, Luton's only dedicated bookshop. But not before welcoming Derrick to the team for his first session!

Brown Books does outreach to improve literacy in the community and engage people with the written word, so it was worth us getting out steps in and delivering 500 leaflets to the neighbouring homes.

In the middle we took a break and did a rubbery workout in People's Park with elastic resistance bands, working on the muscles that provide stability in the legs and our cores.

With a final flurry of deliveries we worked out way back into town for a cool down stretch and said our goodbyes 👋🏾

A small group met up in the afternoon heat to deliver some more flyers for Brown Books, to publicise some forthcoming events include an author fayre tomorrow. Yasin cycled over from a morning GoodGym task in Sundon Park and he and Gill soon got started on flyering Tennyson Road. Assine then joined them at Memorial Park and together they leap frogged along West Hill Road. Unfortunately Yasine was called away so Gill and Assine were faced with the challenge of Cutenhoe Road. Built on a steep hill, Assine magnanimously offered to do the houses on the south side of the road where the front gardens go up a number of steps to the front doors. Where as on the other side of the road there were only a few steps to each door. With the temperature at 30 degrees heat they did well to complete the whole road and then start on a circuit back to the park finishing off on Seymour Avenue with even more steps this time on Gill's side of the road. It was a good work out and even better when a message came through from Brown Books to let us know that they had had 3 new customers in the shop today who had come due to receiving our flyers on Wednesday evening. Made every step worthwhile.