On a chilly night, eleven enthused runners headed over to Crofton Park Library and Bookshop to shift, sort and pack a great big pile of books.

We warmed up our muscles, ready to run, with some lunges, knee-lifts, leg kicks and skips, before jogging out as a group towards Ladywell. There was a great deal of chatter, mostly about what we might choose to eat at our first social...mmmmmm, kebab. We all congratulated Jacqueline (and Jamila in her absence!) on their excellent running in Sunday's 10k race - this was Jamila's first ever race and Jacqueline managed a personal best time, it's looking good for Hackney Half Marathon!

It wasn't long before we arrived in Crofton Park and saw the lights on in the library, where Jason was already setting out boxes and guiding our runners in the right direction for tonight's task. Richard popped on a head-torch and he, Conroy and Judy ventured down into the cellar to retrieve some boxes, while Alice, Caireen, Louisa and Sarraounia built boxes and Niall, Jacqueline and Kate found more boxes, pulled out collapsed towers and started The Big Sort.

At this point, Jason very kindly produced some water and even a bit of cake to keep everyone motivated - thanks Jason!

Quite soon, the whole group were working busily and progress was definitely being made. It seemed, at one point, that the main task was finding the weirdest literary treasures or, in Caireen's case, a giant VHS of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

A VHS - what's one of those?!

Things slowed down slightly when people had to decide 'good book/bad book' and it became a little tricky to call, when Kate uncovered a delightful book all about Prince Phillip - good or bad? So, the 'good' books went into boxes to be kept in the storage area and the 'bad' books were banished into the doorway to be collected. Sad-looking boxes were crushed and taken to the big recycling bin and everything was tidied away before Jason thanked everyone and we went on out merry way, back out into the cold.

Of course, we weren't cold for long, as we skirted the edge of Hilly Fields. Murmurs of 'Oh, are we going to a steeper hill?' could be heard as, yes, we arrived at our steeper hill. Mwah=ha-ha-ha! This was no problem for tonight's runners though, who sprinted up hard in 30-second bursts, then jogged down, all praising Conroy, who had legged it right up to the top. After a few breathlesser (not a word, but useful here) and breathlesser repeats, we all rejoined at the top to marvel at the stunning view (that's what hills are for, right?) before a swift jog downhill to 'home'. Here, we stretched, caught up on next week's task (we'll be off to New Cross Learning to help take down their vintage book sale; that's come round quickly!) and then gathered up our belongings to stroll over to Meze Mangal.

Woo-hoo!

It was lovely to be joined by Imogen and Lucy, who hadn't been able to make the run, but were able to make the social. We're not sure if the staff knew what to make of thirteen hungry runners drooling over their extensive menu! Eventually, we made our minds up and it wasn't long before we were tucking in to Lewisham's finest Turkish food (I'm drooling while I type), perfect refuelling! With the table being divided into the tap-waters at one end and the boozies at the other, over-heard conversations became quite entertaining as we all got to know each other a bit better and planned our next few socials into the Spring and beyond - Model Market, anyone?