Oh, I wish it could be GoodGym every da-a-ay!

With a twinkle in their eyes and a jingle as they went, 28 of Santa's little helpers ran 7km to put up Christmas decorations at Seniors.

How lovely to welcome Jenny, who joined us for the first time, as we ran over to one of our favourite tasks of the year! Lewisham Love also to Sara and Morag, who were on tour for this special occasion.

Dates for your diary!

• This Friday I will be attending the Mayor's Award evening at the Civic Suite in Lewisham, with Nykolette and Emma. After the event, we will be strolling over to the Bottle Bar Shop to celebrate our fantastic nomination for community involvement. Join us from around 8.45pm.

• On Saturday, Hilly Fields parkrun will be collecting donations for the Big Red Box (who we are visiting next Monday). To help make this happen, we are having a GoodGym Lewisham takeover! If you would like to volunteer, there are lots of roles available, including pacing, so sign up here and email hillyfieldsoffice@parkrun.com. If you would rather run, just come along - and don't forget your donation (and barcode)!

• Don't forget to sign up to our Christmas social on December 12th!

Follow the leader!

After a warm-up that included star shapes (of course!), we were led by Run Leader Kim over (and up!) to Stanstead Road to meet Cathy at Seniors, with Caireen and Helen back-marking, to keep us together, thank you!

When we arrived at Seniors, we met Lucy, who had very kindly brought over a surprise for the volunteers at Seniors. We had decided it would be nice to be able to give our friends a gift to help their Christmas celebrations sparkle, so had clubbed together to buy a new tree (and some people had also brought along decorations - thank you!). Have a good scroll through the photos and just look at Cathy and Phyllis's faces! :)

Simply having a wonderful GoodGym time

With the festive tunes playing and the chocolate coins disappearing, we had a few different tasks to get on with:

• assembling and decorating the new tree (which proved trickier than we had hoped!)

• putting up a tree with a blue and silver colour-scheme in the ballroom

• painting the noticeboard in the entrance hall (well done Eve, you were cast out slightly there, away from all the action!)

• putting up lights everywhere

• hanging tinsel, garlands, decorations and baubles across the window

• organising the bookshelf

It takes two to untangle

All credit to Vic for the above pun, created as she and Conroy patiently unraveled some Christmas lights (we can't blame whoever took them down last year, since that was us!). At this point we really did need to stop, but people were very determined to put up that last piece of tinsel in their hand, or afix the lights that they had been struggling with for a while or, in the case of Kim and Amber, put up a whole tree and decorate it in five minutes flat! But we did have to go and, wishing everyone a happy Christmas, we promised to return in the new year.

Wrapping up with a stretch back at Glass Mill, we looked ahead to next week's run, where we will visit the Big Red Box to help sort through donations. This will be another amazing task, so do sign up!