Wow! What an epic afternoon. We had a team of 7 GoodGymers who turned up to spend the afternoon at Farley Community Centre to help make sure that the Christmas Dinner for senior residents went off with lots of festive cheer. It was great fun and lovely to see the older folk really enjoying themselves.

Yasin, Gill and Derrick were first to arrive, and soon got busy getting the hall ready: setting up tables, getting out the chairs, sweeping etc. Dee and Mayra joined the team and helped to finish off laying up the place settings and getting ready to serve the food. Once service started it was all hands on deck to make sure that all 50 guests were served a cracking three course dinner as swiftly as possible, so we were pleased that Freddy arrived to help out too.

There was time for the GoodGymers to enjoy a lunch themselves and Omar and Gill even got involved in the dancing (well who can resist a bit of Reggae?) before starting the mammoth task of clearing up the dishes while the party goers enjoyed their bingo and raffle. Omar excelled himself as the most efficient pot washer in the GoodGym team.

By 5 o'clock we had cleared the hall, wiped the tables and swept the floor, leaving it all immaculate. Vera was so pleased with our efforts that we were all given a box of biscuits as a thank you, and as the night drew in we all set off on foot for home.

The Active People Fair in St George's Square was a gathering of many organisations whose aim is to keep people active and healthy, so a natural place for GoodGym to be.

We met many members of the public, spread the good word about GoodGym, met several partner organisations we've done tasks with already, and a few new leads for new tasks.

4 Goodgymers made their way to Peoples Park, to help the Friends of Peoples Park with their monthly litterpick. The team welcomed Yousef to his first task as we all got stuck in to help the team of volunteers collect well over 20 bags of litter, around 8 of which were all filled with recyclable waste. It was a lovely day for a stroll in the park and making such a positive impact on the environment made it all the more enjoyable. Well done team 👏

This week was the final pre-season visit to 61FC for a last effort to smarten up this football club's grounds and clubhouse.

After a good walk/run/bike to the Kingsway Recreation Ground we met Richard and Cliff who had several tasks for us. We cleared up the rubble behind the clubhouse and added to a pile generated by nearby work to add a new footpath to the park. Meanwhile we had a four person ladder/painting team scraping the old blue paint from the fascia boards and painting them bright white instead.

While all that was going on we also cleaned up some chalky doodles on the walls, painted some of the railings gloss blue, leveled a mound of old woodchip on the grass and had a good sweep up around the building.

So many tasks but with a strong team we got it all done in time to enjoy some strong orange squash and Quality Streets to fuel our journey back into town.