Thank you to everyone who donated to our Christmas Hamper for a Home-Start Family. Your generosity is so valued by the charity and the family are sure to be delighted!

We had a last minute change of plans this evening as our pre-arranged task had to cancel. Instead, we headed to Kingston Rec for a bit of litter picking and graffiti scrubbing. Thanks to Nick for providing the sandpaper at short notice!

I'm not sure anything that happened during our task this evening is even publishable, so the report will be fairly brief. Dave set up for business in the younger children's play house and removed some anatomically inaccurate drawings, whilst the rest of Team Scrubber visited the tall slide and stripped the pole of personal phone numbers, names and various expletives.

Sinéad, Jane and Nia did a stirling job picking up litter by the light of just head torches.

Katie's key learning from this evening that WAP doesn't just mean Wireless Application Protocol. Everyday's a school day at GoodGym!

Our first festive task of this season brought a little bit of joy to plenty of GoodGymers this evening. We joined volunteers at Baffins Pond Association to put up the Christmas Decorations around the compound.

Everyone got in the spirit and there were plenty of super Christmas jumpers, hats and leggings on display.

Wilson's commitment to detail extended to all of the little statues in the compound who are now sporting very dapper Christmas bow-ties!

The compound looked absolutely fantastic by the time we were done - Christmas basically threw up over Baffins Pond this evening.

About 650 people braved the cold to marvel at the sun and listen to some beautiful live music. The sun changed from white, yellow, green and orange over 12 minutes showing two and a half months of solar activity.

I chatted with some lovely visitors and handed out information booklets. It was a pleasant way to spend an evening.

I joined about 20 volunteers including health professionals, Councillors and school pupils at The Hard for a massive litter pick.

After only an hour, we'd cleared a big pile of cigarette butts and some other litter. It looks much nicer now and hopefully people will use the new ballot butt bins and answer the age-old question, does pineapple belong on pizza.

I did an hour's beach clean and just got back home before the downpour started! Among the usual rubbish, I found 8 lots of fishing line and was given some with hooks by a woman whose dog had just tried to pick it up. On one very small section by the Old Puer Hut I picked 82 cigarette ends - yes, I couldn't help counting them!

I did a morning clean up at Canoe Lake and pulled out quite a few wrappers, cans and even bottles from the bottom near the edge.

The task was made a bit trickier by the small flock that followed me round. They were quite vocal in expressing their disappointment that I hadn't brought them any breakfast.