Lettuce - eat cake

It was back to Hannah More Primary School this evening to have a tidy up of the playground, field, front of school, chalk boards and veg patches during the "Spring" half-term in predictable rain showers.

We welcomed James to his very first GoodGym task and he joined the walkers whilst Richard B led the runners over the bridge and (not very) far, far away.

Ruth was there to greet us with litter picking, chalk board cleaning, veg patch weeding (is this one a weed?) and sand sweeping all happening with GoodGymmers scampering all over the school's outside space.

As ever, we were on the hunt for treasure and before long top picks were a buried dinosaur (top archaeological excavating or litter picking, whichever it was) and a plastic cake which was added to the general sense of celebrations for Melanie's 1000th good deed - all surpassed by the amazing 1000 badge hand made by the lovely Richard G who'd had the foresight to waterproof it to save us all being covered in glitter. His graphic design skills are, as ever, second to none.

Vaguely Northern Darren set about capturing photographic evidence of all that was going on...

It turned out most of the chalk boards were undercover - surely being exposed to the rain would make them self-cleaning, if utterly impractical for ever drawing on - Valè and James made short work (they were having to kneel down to get the bottom of the low boards) of turning them very black indeed, whilst nearby Caroline was sweeping with the small broom which she much preferred to the bigger one on offer.

Runners turned litter-pickers Richard B, Ed, Gareth and Ryan resisted the urge to play on the outdoor equipment whilst scouring the grounds - how do they do that? Multiple bags were collected ready for the skip later and added to by Team Weeds - starting with the quite obvious couch grass (although that did prove not so simple by the onions) before progressing onto flatter weeds, Jason, Frances, Jo and James left the beds looking much tidier than when we'd started, and most of the actual vegetable plants still in place.Richard G moved on to the edges of the planters and expertly replanted some cornflowers to a raised bed instead of clinging on to the planter edge for dear life.

We were soon wrapping up as the rain re-started and moved on to the newly painted and furnished staff room (courtesy of some corporate volunteers) where we had the luxury of wash-hand basins before Ruth delighted us with coffee and walnut cake, more chat and a celebratory photo to mark Melanie's 1000th.

Running and walking back, and finding no speed dating at Workout, we were able to enjoys pots of tea (other drinks are available) and more celebratory cookies and our traditional party rings with Paul and Danica who'd called in to say hello. James was well and truly inducted into the random conversations of Bristol GoodGym.

See you next time?