This evening 10 of us gathered at the lovely warm Manor Hospital to brush up on our basic life saving skills.

A few of us have attended this course before but it is always good to have a refresher or learn new skills. You never know when you might need them.

Led by the wonderful Elaine and Nikki we learnt how to tell the difference between a heart attack and a cardiac arrest, how to administer CPR and rescue breaths and how to use a defibrillator.

A few takeaways:

• Of you find a collapsed person who is breathing normally put them in the recovery position (on their left side is best) and call 999.
• If there is no sign of breathing thats when rescue breaths and CPR should be used.
• Drs ABC should be followed (see below)
• If the person has been drowning or choking start with 5 good rescue breaths to get oxygen back into the body.
• A good CPR protocol is 30 compressions to 2 rescue breaths and try to minimise time off the chest.

D - check for danger R - is the person responsive to voice or stimulus S - shout for help (check for bleeding) A - check the airway B - do rescue breaths C - Compressions

Apps: what3words - you can give the exact location to the ambulance AED map - an app for searching defib locations.

Websites:

Defib finder The Circuit

Thank you everyone for coming. I hope that we never need to use the skills that we've learnt today but we have them, just in case.

This morning Katie, Vicky and myself ambled to Boundary Brook Nature Reserve (which is nearly 2000 miles from Istanbul) to ramble and scramble around raking up brambles. Unfortunately nobody there was called Campbell, but that's enough of a preamble.

We were let in by our friend Helen Edwards, the Reserve's Chair, who used a strimmer with a deadly bladed attachment to cut down the brambles at the northern end of the site. We didn't dare go near it, as risking our fingers would have been too much of a gamble. Once the brambles were down the area was in shambles, so we raked it all up and threw it on the compost heap, which soon grew so big that Helen had to climb on top of it and give it a good trample. The work was easier than it looked; in fact the time flowed by like the River Hamble.

Now what else rhymes with bramble? Jamble? Plamble? No... well I guess that's the end of the report then.

PS: See pics for before & after photos and Helen's 100% plant-based hat.

This week we swapped running for sorting, helping give old running shoes a second lease of life through JogOn.

A huge shout-out to Katie, who arrived towing a wheeled suitcase packed with running shoe donations from her colleagues. Her impressive haul helped us reach a grand total of 44 pairs of running shoes, all matched, boxed and ready for their next chapter.

Those 44 pairs have been saved from landfill and will now be sent to JogOn, who redistribute unwanted running shoes around the world so they can continue to be used.

And if each pair has already covered around 500 miles, that's an astonishing 22,000 miles of running between them, roughly the distance from Oxford to Sydney, with plenty left in the tank.

A simple task, a great team effort, and a small step towards a more sustainable running community.

🏃🏃🏼‍♀️‍➡️