The GoodGymers were once again back helping Browns Books with set up before their opening. Today the team were tasked with alphabetising (if that’s even a word) all the shelved books. There were some interesting titles amongst them and we occasionally found ourselves reminiscing and laughing over some of the old school books and annuals in the collection.

What an interesting way to spend a couple of hours on a Friday afternoon. With time on our hands, three of us met up at Luton Point to help with the next chapter of Brown Books' move into their new premises. Today's tasks was all about shelves. The shelves had been cleaned and places around the shop and our next job was to start sorting through the boxes and bags of books and organise the books by genre. It was incredible to see the variety of books that make up the stock. And some of the older books had us reminiscing about times when we had read them. Before long we had the shelves filled with thrillers, romance, sci-fi, fantasy, history, cooking and a whole lot more. And it was lovely seeing all the children's novels and picture books too. Apologies to Gail as she left before the group photo, but our literary trio did a great job. Well done.

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 👌