On a chilly Wednesday evening we caught up about our weekend's activities of Santa Fun Run Volunteering, breakfast out, and our surprise 3rd place at the quiz on Sunday. Jess asked Rich how the Santa Fun Run was, and it became clear that she had confused Andy in a white polyester beard for Rich, much to both Andy's and Rich's delight. We also heard how Andy made his way through two pairs of felt Santa trousers before/during the run, no surprise. We completed our warm up, with more complaints than last week, and Joel sped off towards the task.

As tonight was Joe's last GoodGym of 2023, he turned up appropriately dressed in his special jacket, christmas lights, and festive pyjama bottoms. This also puts him in with an excellent chance of winning the best outfit prize in the return of the GoodGym awards this year.

We had the usual high levels of socialising, so much that we had to keep reminding Rich to use his rake rather than use it to prop himself up. Other than that, lots of leaves were cleared and bins filled at St John's Church Hall!

Great work everyone, we'll be back in January for more leaf clearing.

Laurie

We were starting to get a bit concerned about whether anyone would be able to make it after a few cancellations throughout the day, but thankfully six runners made it to pick litter with head torches and gloves at the ready.

Fay came to say hi to our new runners, Helen and Nathan, and we were slightly mesmerised by their shiny shiny running jackets.

It was so cold that I encouraged everyone to do a warm up, which went down with a lot less complaints than usual!

We jogged down to the river and whilst filling up two large bags, we learnt that you can only make thanksgiving recipes that serve a minimum of five people, even if only two are eating, and that Martin must have made some very sturdy toilet roll angels when he was a child for them to still be on his parents tree every year.

The fumes from the cans of lager we collected nearly got the better of David, with him trying to start an argument with any deniers of yorkshire puddings on a christmas dinner. Joel almost fell into the trap, but couldn't go against his beliefs.

Great effort everyone, see you all soon!

Laurie

We went from leafletting to do some leaf-getting at St John's Church and 14 very keen GoodGymers headed out on a dark and cold November night to help out!

We jogged over down the high street and admiring the Christmas lights in the high street to meet Fay, Rich (injured arse and all), and Angela beavering away.

We leapt to work despite the fact we weren't getting S-paid we were still raking it in. Joe hopped in the bin to push the leaves down and Jess was helping until she said 'you're better off alone', to which Joe whistfully replied 'that's what my ex said'. How we laughed. Doug almost on his knees in laughter. After filling four bins we posed for photos while Andy almost committed tree-son by suggesting we shake the trees to get more leaves down. Leaf it out mate. Laurie lead us on a long route on the way back, we admired the gymnastics Russell attempted and made it back to base.

See you for Parkrun volunteering this weekend! And then spoons, baby!