This afternoon Anna and I met to tackle this garden together, we cut brambles, trimmed plants and mowed the lawn. Some of this was overseen by the recipient as it got him some fresh air and made him feel involved with his garden again. Both of us picked up some more knowledge today, as it was a battery mower, something we had never seen before.

We left the recipient pleased with our work and hopeful we would return to carry on the change of his outside space.

Another great evening with GoodGym at Grow Baby, supporting families in need.

Led by Rachel, our team — Jana, Manasa, Jonathan, Luke and Saber — got straight to work forming a human chain, quickly moving bags upstairs and building an impressive pile by the door (with Luke keeping spirits high with marathon stories along the way!).

With that done in record time, we moved downstairs where tasks were expertly assigned:

• Shoes sorted by Manasa

• Coats and dresses organised by Jonathan

• Toys checked by Luke

• Essentials stocked by Jana

• Saber helping wherever needed

We then tackled sorting winter clothes, blankets and grow bags into storage, making great progress in just an hour. With time for one final push, the teddy bear box turned into a fun finale — with Luke and Jonathan in goal as Jana launched toys over a wall of bags!

We finished with a group selfie among the piles — tired, happy, and having achieved loads in a short time. A brilliant effort all round 👏

Over at Refugee action having run, cycled and walked over we split in to teams to sort donations.

Men’s and women’s clothing as well as new donations required sorting and categorising whilst shoes needed pairing up. As always there were a few rouge items in the wrong section that needed rehoming and a few rainbow and sparkly numbers discovered for photos.

An hour after starting John and Tom had created an incredibly neat menswear department, Emma, Anna and Ellie had got women’s wear in order, Marcus had ensured that every shoe had a partner and Adam and Claire had filtered and put away all the donations.

After few snacks (we couldn’t resist) and a group photo we said our goodbyes with the runners heading off for a lovely run along the river.

It was all aboard for this week's group task helping out the Friends of Raynes Park Station. Our job was to move a big delivery of soil from the street up the stairs to the platform, using a series of buckets and trugs. It was heavy work but we were soon on track to finish on time, even managing to cut back some brambles as well. Before departing we presented Jade with a card and colourful wig to celebrate her 500 task milestone. Well done, Jade - tressed to impress!

Best-laid plans often go awry... and tonight was one of these times. Our resilient leader Rachel had organised two tasks for the evening (as our little group is not so little anymore!) but alas one fell through at the last minute so all 13 of us ended up together at Claremont Gardens in Surbiton. Fortunately the task here was big enough to take us all and then some.

We all congregated by the dried up pond in Claremont Gardens and task owner Georgina explained that the pond needed to be stripped back of rubbish, sticks, logs and dead/unnecessary reeds so that it could be filled up again. The liner had unfortunately failed which meant, even after all the rain fall of 2026 so far, the pond was mostly dry.

Many hands really were needed for this task as there was a whole load to do. Sticks and logs were collected from the pond bed and turned into a bug hotel up on the bank; reeds were pulled up from the driest parts; Dead vegetation was removed; huge clumps of reed roots were extracted and swathes of grass were dug up, roots and all. We found a few of our amphibious friends along the way and made sure that they hopped off to a safe spot.

The hour flew by and we made great progress. The next step is to fill the pond and hope that our work means that the water holds this time! There's plenty more work to do in and around the pond so hopefully we'll be back to check it out again sometime soon.