OG's to Newbies and everyone else in between

It's our 6th birthday ... I don't feel 6 years older than when I first started doing GoodGym! Maybe it's the GG vibe that keeps us young?!! But what keeps us young is all the love we get from being in this group. And OMG I am blown away that sooooo many of you came this evening to help celebrate our 6th birthday! I really was only expecting the 10 that signed up to be there so when I saw another 10 mysteriously appear behind the church doors...it was like a devine intervention! Thank you to you all for making the effort to come along tonight.

Five going on Six

This past year we have as always achieved so much. We won an award at the Slough CSV #OneSlough Awards for our Innovative Ways for helping the community. We celebrated Jean's 90th birthday. We've had new task owners like Global Education Trust and Raggy Rd Allotments as well as our usuals. We've formed new friendships. We've had new members from the refugee community join us and sadly we've lost a few too. We battled the Bibby (and won!). Ricky finally got his 100th!. Jen hit 450 plus!; Ruth served her century (tonight); Sut soared to 400; Pam ploughed to over 370 and Sara smashed out over 260, Sandy succeeded with nearly 230 and Helen hacked out 77 heading towards her 100th! We karaoked at Christmas; have been frequent flyers and litter heroes and had allot of fun digging around. We've networked and insta-lly promoted GG as soon as the task has been done. We Beat-the Boat but still have The Big Half, Berlin and Vitality to smash!

There is always so much going on in the small yet compacted town that is Slough. And we've collected over 100 bags of rubbish around Slough since our last birthday!

We started the evening doing our usual. Meeting up Upton Court Park and making our way down to our task location of St Mary's Church (with the little surprise at the Church). Our task was to do a bit inside and a bit outside. Inside we had Sandy, Abdul, Roisin, Ruth and Pam sweeping, dusting and wiping whilst everyone else were outside either litter picking or cutting back overgrowth. With our usual grace we got through the tasks fairly swiftly, leaving enough time for cake....

But as with any special event we did have a twist.

Goodlympics

I don't know about you but I love the Olympics and watch as many events as I can. So whilst I was watching the ladies Rugby last night I came up with the idea of doing our very own Olympic events. Luckily I have 3 very eager helpers in my household who designed some of the games, drew out the signs and even made us an Olympic flame

It's never good to be too prepared

At home, I had prepped a sheet of paper outlining each person signed up (the good ones who signed up!) with a partner and a little Olympic style game. But when you get 10 others turn up (the bad ones for not signing up..but oh so good to see them!), I had to throw my paper away and improvise..

So in the end we had:

• Runners Beans We had Sara, Pam, Gauri and Meera on bean bags races. Pam showed so much grace as she eloquently balanced the bean bag on her head whilst walking round the war memorial without it falling off her head even once! Gold standard right there;

• N'Sync were Jenny ,Sandy, Ruth and Roisin on a synchronized swim routine. And wow how good were they! They could (just maybe) give Tom and Noah a few tips??;

• The Happy Hoppers were Harsha,Keira ,Chrissy, Agnija, Jen and Devajani. They gave us an entertaining minute of their show jumping skills using litter pickers! What style; what class!;

• Bean Poles were Abdulaziz, Peter, Ricky and Jean on bean bag throws. Ricky took an early lead closely followed by Abdul, but Jean stole the show with her sideways throw!

Each team displayed excellent execution, flare and skill. Team GB doesn't know it's missing some key players from Slough over in Paris

Flaming 'ell

We ended the night with the Goodlympic flame being passed from member to member as it makes it's way (slowy...might take it 4 years) to LA. Great solo efforts by all!

Ruth's 100th

Huge well done to Ruth on achieving her 100th Good Deed tonight! Ruth has been a founder member and supporter of ours since we started and we love having her along whenever she is free. Well done Ruth.

And then there was cake! Thank you to Helen for baking such delicious cup cakes and to everyone for being such good sports in all my mad games.

Thank you all so much for making another birthday event an enjoyable one.

A local Slough resident Oskana (originally from Ukraine), sent out a plea for help.

Urgent supplies needed for front line soldiers in her village in Ukraine... it never ceases to amaze me how we as a team always pull together to donate whats needed.

From blankets, duvets, batteries, torches, dry foods, sanitary wear, hand sanitisers to clothes and toothpaste all generously given.

Special mention to Agnija who has been helping to pack items and communicate back to the team the items needed.

Four vans are heading out to Ukraine at the weekend with these supplies.

Prayers for peace

Wow! what an amazing amount of donations from the team. Over 25 bagfuls of long shelf life items given to Slough Outreach to serve to their friends in need.

• Soup x 38 boxes;
• Chocolates and snack bars x 30 packets;
• Drinks cans/cartons x 15 cases
• Porridge x 20 boxes;
• Cereals x 5 boxes;
• Crisps x 8 bags.

This was one of those community missions which everyone signed up for from our WhatsApp group!

Well done everyone - amazing efforts

Baby it’s coald outside

So did you finish? Did you get your daily km’s in? Did you do more than your partner? Whichever way, well done! It’s not easy going out everyday pounding the pavements especially this time of year but well done to you all for getting out and doing it (even if it wasn’t the mileage you thought you’d put in).

It’s the most wonderful time for a beer

I see Ricky and Claire got in a sneaky beer after a 10k.. wohoo!

I had a lovely run, walk, chat with Jean to Eton where she gave me the two finger salute (all meant with love.. and the wrong way round hahah).

Helen, Claire and I got side-tracked at Thames Valley Athletics Centre with a few tik toks! But still managed to get our km’s in.

We really were in the spirit of Christmas

Did you forget your Christmas elfie

Of course we didn’t! Plenty of snaps from Pam, Jen, Nisha and Sut as well as Roisin, Keira and Claire!

I hope you enjoyed your extra 12 days of Christmas The GG remix challenge - all in order to make more santamental memories to take into 2022

You can put your feet up now and enjoy a mince pie or two.

I look forward to seeing you all in 2022!