This evening we were back helping St Paul's church on Stoke Rd with a gardening task. With a mixed bag of arrival routes to the task location we waited for Neline to arrive and lettuce know what area she wanted us to focus on.

We were really pleased to get a call from Mehdi to say he was coming but knew that Eshan may not arrive today...little did we know!

Neline showed us to the side of the church and asked for the line of beds along the wall to be tidied up and weeds removed. With tools in hand we got to work. It was great to have Joseph back and Helen on an evening task.

The recent rain had been a blessing as the soil was nice and soft and easy to remove the weeds. The whole task didn't take too long at all tonight. We even had extra help from a church goer and a lovely surprise visit at the end from Eshan and Mohammad. They actually stayed on with Mehdi to help with the nettled areas - the untouchables!

Thank you everyone for all your efforts this evening.

Next week it's our 5th birthday! So please do come along to our celebratory task

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/school-play-ground-tidy-up-and-it-s-our-5th-birthday

When is a weed not a weed? When it’s a flower

It’s been a month since we were last at the Cherry Orchard Allotments on Stoke Rd and what a difference a month can make! Especially when we’ve had such temperamental weather over the past few weeks.

On arrival we went to have a look at the plot to see what we could do and straight away the 3rd bed in took our attention. The weeds were huge! But when has that ever herbed our enthusiasm?

With a 9 strong red army of volunteers tonight we knew we could tackle the thistle in no thyme at all.

Happy Appy

But it was very handy having the plant app on Jen and Peter's phones as we could clearly see the weeds which looked like weeds but what were the ones that looked like weeds yet were not?!

The app told us they were:-

• prickly lettuce;

• Beetroot;

• Mustard;

• Joseph’s coat also known as Chinese spinach

Phew! At least we now knew what was what rather than leaving it to trowel and error

I took charge of the wheelbarrow today and lucky I had a license to ‘drive’ that! (I had recently parsley the test!)…. With plenty of journeys back and forth, I was too whimpish to offload the weeds using my hands so I used two tools from the shed… but shhhh don’t tell anyone that (lettuce keep that secret)!

Within 40 odd minutes we had removed all the weeds from two beds. Good job everyone.

Next week we will be at St Paul’s church on Stoke Rd helping to tidy up their outdoor space. Our meet up point is Masaani on Shaggy Calf Lane (towards Wexham Rd).

This was our second task especially planned for the team at Slough Refugee Support. A while back I did some work with the English class wearing another hat and one issue they highlighted was that they wanted to volunteer in the community but didn't know how to.

Its good to talk

The class members just needed a lead, a link, a way in to make this happen for them.

So I thought the perfect way to combine intergrating into the community as well as practising conversational English was to do a special GoodGym task just for this class.

Last month we went to Salt Hill Park and did a litter pick there. And today we went to The Jubilee River for another environmental litter pick.

Noreen the class teacher had given them key words to find and with an even split of the class members and GoodGymers off we went to talk, walk and find our key word items! With 17 of us in total we were bound to collect a few bagfuls!

I'm so pleased that after last months session Mehdi, Mohammad and Ehsan all decided to come along to our Monday evening group sessions too! They have now been on 5 sessions with us!

I am very happy to meet this group and I will be even happier to be able to help people improve their condition and thank you for your good management, Mrs. Manjit.

This was a lovely email Mohammad sent me last week and it really warms my heart that we as a group are able to welcome these guys with such open arms and that they feel so part of the team.

We hope more class members will join us on other sessions soon. This is how communities are formed and how we make Slough a better place.

Tonight's task was to distribute leaflets for the lovely Eva and her Artful Hub/Antz Kids on their art classes and children's club classes in the Britwell area.

Lift, rack, raise and throw!

We met at Kennedy Park and did a fitness session involving medicine ball slams (and throws!); kettlebell swings; agility ladder runs. The team were split into 2 and one went off to do a walk/run up the path and back whilst the other slammed, racked, pressed and swung heavy kit around...all in a controlled manner of course. I do love Kennedy Park, it has a great 'hill sprints' hill, you can see the trading estate towers from there and it has lovely housing estates surrounding it.

As Eva's Antz Kids Club is based in Britwell, it made perfect sense to be in this area. I must admit, it's a part of Slough that I know that well but that's the beauty of GoodGym, you get to go to every area and see what it has to offer!

After the fitness session we headed up Wentworth Ave towards the library (which is really impressive and worth a visit by the way), and then split off into 4 pairs with 30(ish) leaflets each. The aim was to see which pair would come back first to Kennedy Park. ​​

Leaflet dropping is always better in 2's! So off we went in our pairs taking a few streets each. Well within 40 minutes we had all distributed 300. We definitely flew this through this task tonight.

First team back were Sara and Jen, closely followed by Claire and I, then Pam and Kam and last but not least Jean and Mehdi.

Next week we are at the Cherry Orchard Allotments, meeting at Masaani on Shaggy Calf Lane at 6.30pm

This evening's session was a real community affair as we aimed to connect local residents and local councillors with the GoodGym concept of wellbeing, fitness, mental health, social interaction and social goodness - all combined on a Monday evening.

We hope the local residents enjoyed a mini fitness session in the park before we did a community litter pick.

The idea of this cocktail combination was mastered when long term member Mabu became a local ward councillor and asked me if we could do something in his ward to engage with the residents and show them options to getting fit and doing good!

A litter taster of GoodGym

It's always our intention to make more people aware of what we do and how they can join in. Perhaps the local residents may not be ready to join us across the town however tonight's session was a litter taster of what we do, when we do it and how we do it. So hopefully more locals will start to get involved or even create their own little GG communities.

F is for fun and fitness

As we were staying put rather than our usual run/walk off to the task location, I had more time to brush off the dust on the circuit kit and have it all ready before anyone even turned up! With the help of Mabu who was there super early, we put out the cones, the hurdles and the agility ladder.

By the time everyone had arrived including Cllr Manku and two local residents, the wind had died down just enough! It was great to see Sara again and to have our friends from Slough Refugee Support back for their 4th session! They really are becoming a regular part of the team and we love it!

Starting off with a gentle warm up and introductions, I then took 3 takes to make an impromptu introduction video to GoodGym (at least I was on a 'good' hair day!).

Next we had cone to cone running (or walking) in 30 seconds, followed by heads, shoulders, knees, toes and cone game, swiftly followed by a split in the teams with one going for a walk/run around the triangle footpath whilst the other did a circuit set. And finally, la piece de resistance...a good old fashioned relay race!

L is for a lotta litter or a little litter

You never know how much litter you will find in a park like Langley Memorial. The wind tonight certainly didn't help keep the park tidy. So we decided to go with 3 black bags to start with and see how much we could collect.

We broke off into smaller groups with Sara taking Mohammad and Eshan with her; Pam had Jean and Mehdi, whilst Mabu had Gurcharan and Peter. Eshan was constantly practising his English skills with new words being added to his vocabulary like Starburst!

Within 20 minutes we had filled those 3 black bags full of rubbish.

Well done to everyone for attending and getting stuck in.

Next week we will be meeting at Kennedy Park in Britwell for a leaflet task.

This evening we did our first task with St Mary's Church on Church St. Such a stunning building which needed a little tlc around the permiter of the actual church where the weeds were starting to grow.

A very warm welcome to Deborah on her first task with us. We hope you enjoyed it.

Our meet up point this evening was Upton Court Park which was 1km from the task location.

It was great to have our 3 friends from Slough Refugee Support English class back again.

Whilst we waited for the rest of the team to arrive, Pam, Claire, Mehdi, Ehsan and Mohammad were treated to a warm up session! We took this opportunity to teach new English words to the guys whilst they taught us the equivalent in Parsi!

Word Association

Whats the best way to learn a new language? You link it to a word that sounds similar.... so

• Lunge is lunch;

• Jogging is joking;

• Roundabout is circle

You dig it?

With a quick text from Peter saying he'd started walking down with Deborah, the rest of us gave Pam a walking head start before we starting joking down Upton Court Park to the Church.

On arrival we met Devajani, Claire, Agnia, Kam and Scott (our task owner). Scott explained what needed doing and had kindly provided refreshments for us.

We then broke off into smaller groups and got to work on our patch.

Within no time we had removed all the weeds and had the area looking brand new! We then enjoyed some cold drinks and fruit... thank you St Mary's Church. With talk of a return task we set off back to our start locations.

Next week we are at Langley Memorial Park on Langley Rd and corner of High St Langley for a community litter pick and fitness session

Though we also have a litter pick at Black Park on Friday. Plus volunteering at Cippenham Carnival on Saturday.

https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions

I’m so pleased that three of our friends from Slough Refugee Support English class decided to come along tonight after having enjoyed a volunteering session with us last Thursday.

Mehdi, Mohammad and Ehsan were ready and raring to go! They had already arrived as Jean and I walked up to our meet up point.

With Peter soon in tow, we started to walk down to the task location - The Stoke Road, Cherry Orchard Allotments. This is where our task owner Home Start help women (pre and post natal) to provide a space for connecting with nature, meeting new people , reduce isolation, enhance mental wellbeing and harvest and grow food.

Our task tonight was to turn over the soil in the last two beds and remove all the weeds.

I beg your garden?!

We love helping Home Start on this project as it’s a task where we all get to be in the same locality and talk to each other.

This is one thing that our 3 new participants wanted - to talk to other people and practice their conversational skills. So we split ourselves up and spent some time tonight talking to new people, enhancing our own moods, doing something good and just generally being happy.

We all learned new words today from Parsi to English to Bengali to Punjabi - Slough really is the multicultural center of Berkshire!

Celebrate Good Times

It was Jean's birthday a couple of weeks so she bought along some yummy cakes for us all.

Speaking of birthday's... it's nearly our 5th birthday! I'll be sending out some details soon on our celebrations!

Next week we are helping St Mary’s Church on Church St. This is a new task for us so hope to see you there.

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/st-mary-s-church-garden-space-weeding?legacy=true