Matthew

On Friday I met up with the amazing James Coates of Alley's Angels at what is going to become the Anfield Village Green. At the moment it is just a blank piece of grassed over land riddled with litter embedded in the ground and it is going to take a while to get it to a state where it can be used as a village green. But James has taken over the upkeep of the land and by regularly litter picking and mowing and at some point the dream is to use it for Morris dancing and Shakespeare and for general village green type stuff.

I cleared the land of litter only last week and collected three very full bags of litter. In only a week another bag and a half had to be collected but it does look great once done and hopefully with regular litter picking it is going to get easier and easier. And people are noticing what James is doing. A pleasure to be able to help out and for once the rain held off.

I have done a few food hamper deliveries over the last few months and this one was super important as Steve Radford, one of our local councillors and an amazing human being, at the last minute couldn't do it. There were some urgent deliveries of hampers needed to vulnerable elderly people where I live. And so I went and bought the food and delivered it. It is so humbling to see scared and lonely people receiving food, one of whom described it as being like Christmas all over again. A pleasure to be able to help out.

What is normally a long dark month anyway was made a little bit shorter and brighter with the k a day challenge.

GG'ers who signed up for the challenge committed to getting out for at least a kilometer a day during January, or a total of at least 31k over the month.

We had some great stories shared such as Pauline's 'Daily Mile' that she would do at her school, and Michal's first ever marathon, amazing!

Well done everyone and thanks for taking part and keeping us connected with your stories.

Happy running/walking/cycling/moving, Rachael

In collaboration with Alley's Angels, who have supplied the rubbish bags, I attended a particularly bad area for litter. It is next to a bus stop and an off licence and the place is used as a rubbish tip. A 2.4m high fence has been put up and some gauze to try and stop people littering here but even that has been slashed. It took a good 3 hours to clear the area. It didn't look too bad on first inspection but there are so many tiny bits of litter and cans under the grass which are hard to remove that a one hour job was quickly stretched to 3.

I found syringes, plenty of bags of dog poo, dead rats, cans, bottles etc etc. It took 3 large refuse bags to collect everything. It won't stop people littering but it is about the presence in the community and plenty of people stopped me to compliment me on what I was doing including a homeless man who said he had stopped littering and would make sure he would stop others if he saw them.

James from Alley's Angels will now be able to go and mow the grass safe in the knowledge there shouldn't be any nasty surprises. The plan for this area is to turn it into a village green and have Morris Men and poetry recitals and all things inbetween and right in the middle of Anfield. What a dream and hopefully there will be more opportunities to collaborate with Alley's Angels and clear up Liverpool, one pick at a time.