Pile high club

I don't know about you, but I'm finding all these fallen leaves are getting to be a bit of a pain. Wet, slippy, getting our sparkling trainers all mucky. If only something could be done about it.

Enter GoodGym! Last night we ran down to Berrymede School to help Romina of Cultivate clear up masses of leaves in their huge playground. And when we say masses, there were piles of leaves as far as the eye could see.

Romina had already cleared a lot of them into helpful mounds, but there were still great drifts of them behind trees, in corners and generally making a nuisance of themselves across the whole area.

Not only are they dangerous for all the kids running about as they get wet and slippery, but they could actually be useful. Cultivate London uses the leaves that are collected and turns them into mulch, which in turn is used at their nurseries where young people are trained in horticulture. Everyone's a winner.

Before we got started we each took a guess on how many bags we would end of collecting, and with estimates ranging from 20 to 52, it was clear there was plenty of work to be done.

Each group got busy raking, collecting, shoveling and bagging and it was interesting to walk around and eavesdrop on all the different conversations that were happening at the same time. Like who was extolling the virtue of long socks whilst running cross country, who had visited every country in Europe, and who amongst us could have been in a Carry On film...

Job done, we counted up the bags and with Emily as runner up, there was one clear champ - well done Michelle with a very close guess of 52 bags! The final tally was 50 full sacks , which is pretty amazing going.

Watch out for our cameo on Sky, as on our run back we stopped by the set where something was being filmed, and even got a glimpse of some very exciting fight scenes. Last night Berrymede, tomorrow Hollywood!

We're soon going to be starting regular Thursday lunchtime drop ins at the amazing Hounslow Community Foodbox - if you can spare an hour to help make a real difference, please sign up here.

Next week we're back at Cavendish School to help with various jobs there, and we also have a community mission at Harvard Hill coming up. There's loads of GGing to be done, so get signing up!