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Last night, not only did we turn a whole eight years old, our group session pushed us over the 10 000 good deed mark! What an amazing way to celebrate.

And celebrate we did! On the hottest day of the year, a huge 21 of us met to do good and get fit on the anniversary of our very first group run. It seemed right that we should be going to our own GoodGym garden, a space where we've been growing fruit and veg to donate to the kids program at the theatre.

So after a warm up where we did, you guessed it, 8 reps of various exercises, we went round the group and said what we wanted to do when we grew up when we were 8 years old. Answers ranged from footballer, to two dentists and even Xena Warrier princess!

We set off for the garden, and were delighted to find that there were loads of crops ready to be harvested, including potatoes and some delicious looking kale. We also collected loads of the fallen cooking apples, weeded, staked and strung up our runner beans (appropriate for us!).

The produce we grow will be used to donate to the children's sessions at the theatre, which is run as a charity, and to other community food organisations. We are also repurposing what would otherwise be underused land and increasing biodiversity, so it's a win-win-win situation!

Job done we headed over to the common to play some very silly but hopefully fun ball based fitness games. We started off with human hungry hippos, before testing our squat and reflex skills before having a plank off whilst balancing the balls on our backs. There were some interesting tactics on display and luckily we had the VAR courtesy of Paul to go back and watch game play. Shout out to Kevin and Jordan for collecting the most, with Hugo and Suresh in a close second! In the plank off it came down to six of the strongest cores - well done Catherine, Beth, Hugo, Elif, Sophie and Jasmin!

After all that fun and hard work, it was time to head back to the Omnibus bar for some drinks, chats and incredible food. Everybody outdid themselves with the goodies, but it was Catherine's masterpiece of a cake that had us all talking. It was an amazing creation, and what made it more delicious was that is was baked using blackberries forged from Wandsworth common - what could be more GoodGym than that!

We had a wonderful speech from Jordan, who put what GG means to us all into words better than I could hope to here. So to echo him, there are so many memories we've made over the past 8 years. There have been lots of new faces and we love that our group is welcoming and inclusive. We have achieved so much together and made some beautiful friendships. So here's to the next 8 - and beyond.

Apparently 8 years is a bronze wedding anniversary, but I think every single one of you deserves a gold medal!

Next week we'll be back for more doing good and getting active, when we'll be painting playground planters. Hope to see you there!

Karaoke may be Japanese for empty orchestra but there certainly wasn't anything empty about our Goodgymmers performance as 30 of them orchestrated a fun night in the wild lands of Haringey.

Top Of The Pops

It wasn't the most auspicious of starts for this month's Goodgym Social as our very own Goodgym Haringey decided to host a party night bang on in the middle of a yellow weather warning and as the hills of North London became impromptu waterfalls. As a small squad ran to Rowan's from the pre-party task, we all mused how many of the whopping 31 Goodgymmers signed up for the party would actually fight their way through the inclement weather to attend a knees up in Finsbury Park. The consensus was that we expected around 15 people to show up and we would have called that a good innings. Oh, reader, how wrong we were.

One by one, they all started arriving. Soggy, tardy, smiling - they all looked sublime in what was a washout of an evening elsewhere.

Drinks flowed, as did the chat, some people even braved the rather radioactive-looking burgers and before you knew it, 30 of us were sitting around having a jolly old time under the both metaphorical and literal Goodgym flag in the corner. Alas, it can't all be fun so just as everyone was relaxing into the night, GGHaringey's Gramps pounced on the innocent, unexpecting Goodgymmers with an indecent proposal they just couldn't say no - karaoke time.

Now I've heard there was a secret chord / that David played, and it pleased the Lord but the good ol' King had nothing on our crimson-tinged canaries as they sang song after song with gusto, enthusiasm, and -occasionally- even in tune. All tastes were catered for, with particular highlights including a life affirming group rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody and a somewhat poignant version of checks notes Tubthumping.

After two hours (!) of singing, it was time for a little boogie and GGHaringey's Latoya led the way to the dancefloor where the DJ indulged our now dwindling group with a few Latino-flavoured tunes. Magic stuff.

With thanks to John, Jack and everyone else who have revived the monthly socials and to everyone who came last night to help GGHaringey do our bit.

Next month's fun is taking place in Paddington - details here!