Tag team

A terrific twelve sorted, cleaned, steamed and tagged to make a real difference to Crystal Palace St Christopher's charity shop.

Thankfully the weather was kinder to us this evening so we headed to the park, safe in the knowledge that the branches should stay attached to their trees. We did our winter stress pig warm-up, with the cold evidently affecting the groups imagination, with multiple star jumps and lunges completed before we democratically decided to run through the centre of the park, to avoid the stonking hill. Thanks to Ian for back-marking.

Mark joined us at the shop, where we were greeted by manager Teresa. She had plenty of jobs for us to tackle, so we split off into groups to clean the shoe shelves (with a pair of boxer shorts!), sort bags of donations and hunt for clothes with J1 labels as their time in the shop had come to an end. We learnt that they would be sent to another shop, as would the donated clothes deemed to be poorer quality. There were some lovely items in the shop, along with plenty of striking footwear.

We soon had piles of clothes ready for the rails, which we hung (rose gold hangers for the women, wooden for the men, fact fans) and tagged, after a quick lesson on the tagging gun from Teresa. Check out the looks of concentration on Bradley's face for evidence that it wasn't quite as easy as first thought..

Fiona armed herself with the steamer and set to work steaming the clothes ready to be returned to the rails. It was a very satisfying job and we almost had to prise the steamer from her hands when time was up. A few us were tempted to smuggle it out of the shop and bin our irons at home!

It was soon time to go and Teresa was mightily grateful for our help, having made her Wednesday morning far easier. She had kindly bought drinks, Jaffa Cakes and Maltesers for us, which tempted some of us, energy for the run back to base. It was thankfully downhill on the way back, but I had craftily planned some hills runs for the fitness session. We were slightly scuppered by the lack of light and a wet surface, but we managed three before carefully making our way back through the park to stretch.

Next week takes us back to Upper Norwood Methodist Church to continue clearing the outside space, sign up here. I will bring lights but please bring a head torch if you have one, and gardening gloves. Here's hoping the weather will be kind to us..