All good things come to an end, and time is up for the Leagate shopping centre in Lee ahead of its impending demolition: the ‘spoons has already gone and now it’s time for GRACE (Greenwich Refugee Aid & Community Enterprise) to up sticks and move to pastures new. The charity https://www.graceaid.org.uk/ has, since 2015, been helping refugees, asylum seekers and survivors of trafficking and abuse rebuild their lives and now their shop is moving to a new location.

And this is where Good Gym came in. Three runners made their way to the shop to help move furniture from the upper floor to the lower ahead of that furniture being loaded into vans and moved away. Most of what needed moving was shelves, with care needed not to destroy the lighting (and ourselves) on the way down the stairs, but there were also the challenges of moving a sofa and also a large quantity of random wood that had been kept on the off-chance that it might be used to make something (note to self, may be time to dispose of my own collection of random wood set aside to make something).

An hour flew by and it was soon time to say goodbye to the main volunteer Sarah and wander off into the night, and on a personal note this Good Gymer was sad to be leaving the site of their first Lewisham mission https://www.goodgym.org/v3/reports/in-good-grace-tuesdays-are-pants for the last time.

Given my profile suggests that I am ‘the human embodiment of the Leegate Centre’ I couldn’t resist a mission there. The wonderful GRACE (Greenwich Refugee Aid & Community Enterprise) are having to move as the decrepit shopping centre has an appointment with the wrecking ball later in the year. I spent a couple of hours packing books, DVDs and CDs into boxes and going up a ladder retrieving framed pictures from walls.

The fantastic GRACE - Greenwich Refugee Aid and Community Enterprise - needed a hand clearing out and cleaning an upstairs room. They're a great bunch of people doing really valuable work, so what better way to spend part of a Saturday afternoon? Darryl and Jacqueline beavered away with broom, vacuum cleaner and mop, and even lured a passing Sarah in to help out for a bit while on the way to the skip. A room that started out as a dirty mess is now cleaner and ready for use. GRACE is a group run favourite - hopefully we'll be back there soon.

Welcome to those running their first group run with us last night, I hope you enjoyed yourselves!

A super quick warm up (off the grass as it was pretty muddy) and we were on our way to GRACE. It's a pretty busy road that we follow the whole way there so not exactly picturesque but we kept together as a group with Ian doing an excellent job of backmarking.

We arriving at GRACE, picking up a couple of extra goodgymmers that had met us at the task.

Season's Sortings

The task for this evening was to sort the winter clothes (that had already been sorted once, so I wasn't expecting any of the usual random finds) into categories of: mens, womens, girls and boys and then sort further into sizes.

Once the sorted sorted clothes were in their crates, we needed to bag them up and label them. There was an excellent labeling system going on, making it all very streamlined.

I couldn't resist putting on some plastic gloves myself and joining in the sorting.

Spring, Summer, Autumn, Ski-suit

Winter was done and all in the correct bags ready to be shipped, we can forget about winter now, it's gone. Time to move onto summer!!

We made a start on the sorted cage of summer clothes with only 10 minutes left, we didn't quite make it through the entire cage but we gave it a good start.

No one seemed to want to stop so I had to announce that whatever you're holding....you have to wear. No, don't worry, just had to get it into its correct pile and be in position for the group photo.

We began to make our way back to Glassmill and at that point I realised Emma wasn't with us and I was sure I was the last person to leave GRACE. Turns out she wasn't spending the night sorting clothes, she'd just got the bus home.

A quick stretch in the warmth of Glassmill and working out just how short of a run next weeks task is, it was time for one more document check (4 in one evening, got to be a record)!

If you'd like to take part in missions that require a DBS check or you'd like to start coach running, please bring your ID documents to a group run so that I can check them.

A group of red t-shirt’s gathered in the foyer of Glassmill can only mean 1 thing, it was time for some running and doing good! This week we were off to GRACE which always means lots of sorting and organising.

A quick recap of this weeks news:

• Well done to Bradley who came second at the Chiswick Half Marathon at the weekend and to Liv who ran her first marathon in Amsterdam, amazing running from both of you.
• A huge good luck to Stephen who is running Venice Marathon this weekend, I hope it’s not the same conditions as it was last year when I ran it!!
• On 2nd November we have a GoodGym takeover of Hilly Fields Parkrun, if you would like to volunteer, drop Adele an email with what role you fancy doing.

We began the evening with a quick headcount in a rather oddly shaped circle, that wasn’t really a circle, but I went with it, it worked. And then straight into a game of “I shout a body part and a number and those who are leftover have to do squats”, I’m sure the game has a proper name really! Then we set off as a group through the centre of Lewisham, detouring for some roadworks and up the busy main road to GRACE, it’s not the most picturesque of routes.

We arrived promptly, picking up people on the way and great work by those that met us at the task, getting stuck in before we arrived!

The tasks for this evening were pretty straightforward, sorting through cages of clothes and organising them into men, women and children piles and then removing the items that couldn’t be of use and saving the items that could be sold in the shop.

And the other task was sorting boxes of baby clothes into size order and packed neatly to condense the amount of boxes.

The first difficult task was getting the plastic gloves out of the box! Everyone got to work and there was quite a lot of concentration on organising the clothes until we found some very questionable pieces of clothing, see pictures!

It was time to be wrapping up but there was still half a cage of clothes to sort and put in bags so it was all hands on deck to get everything sorted, I couldn’t write labels for the bags quick enough!

Group photo done and we made our back back to Glassmill to stretch and try to remember what next weeks task is..it’ll be a good one.

Seven, yes SEVEN, Good Gymers from several different boroughs attended a special Community Mission on a Tuesday night at GRACE - Greenwich Refugee Aid and Community Enterprise - to help with a major shipment of clothing to help refugees in Greece. We were met by the lovely Louise who soon put us all to work, powered by chocolate, biscuits and tea (we always get looked after at GRACE!). Anyone who has ever been to GRACE will know that sooner or later, you always have to handle pants, and tonight was no exception, with the prize for biggest pants going to Martin who found an enormous pair (why do people donate these things, why?) All pants go into the rag bin along with any stained or damaged items - and are sold for rags, so old pants can still be useful!!!

We quickly sorted through two huge cages of items, and were then put to task on moving items of heavy furniture around for collection - tasks that just can't be done in the daytime with only one or two volunteers. These types of tasks are perfect for the Good Gym crew - we love a bit of lifting and moving (makes a change from all the pants-handling). Once completed, we once again set off into the dark and onto the streets of Lewisham, with a warm glow inside.