While I cannot speak for Farid, what an effort.

Two bacon and egg sandwiches. One burger. Two flapjack. Countless quality street.

Oh, and we collected 93 trees. Andy with his usual atrocious white van driving.

The Christmas tree collection has helped raise over £73,000 for the fantastic work that Farleigh Hospice do.

Thank you to all volunteers, especially those who provided us with food!

congratulations to Jen for ten good deeds

It was a dark and chilly January evening, Jen, myself, Erin, and a late late late late late Andy met at the gym, meeting the walkers and the Walkers at the church directly.

We set off discussing our new year resolutions and Christmas lack of showering. Arriving at the church we raked right in to action. Filling bins and tubs left, right, and centre.

After we had finished we gathered round for a celebratory photo for the 10 deed milestone and unfortunately I am unable to post one of them due to the unsavoury pose Rich decided to do. Tut tut.

Then the highlight of the task! We were all given small bottles of wine by Stephen! Thank you! Much appreciated. I had to entrust mine with Sallyann so hopefully I will get them before she drinks them...

We headed off back and Erin and Jen chaperoned Andy to base while I peeled off.

Top work everyone! Don't forget it is our Thai food social this weekend.

First prize was £1000 cash which fortunately I managed to win, who would have expected it!

Great jumping all.

And a lovely christmas for all I hope

Our final group run of 2025!

We met the lovely Callum from Active Essex, joining us to learn a bit more about GoodGym so it can be promoted to more people around Chelmsford.

It was a very important evening for us: not only the last group run of 2025, but we were also going for drinks and takeaway afterwards. I made it clear that there was no time to waste with chatting - specifically aiming this instruction at Rich, Andy, and Russell.

Fay, Jess and Joel set off walking with the leaflets (beautifully folded as ever), whilst the rest of us took a slightly longer way out to run to meet at our starting point on Broomfield Road. We didn't get off to a good start at all - the first lot of houses had no letterboxes. We sped off up Swiss Avenue, and meandered our way round the surrounding streets until we got all the leaflets delivered. Apologies to Russell - he didn't time waste and probably delivered the most leaflets.

I was SO focused on getting the task done, I only took one photo. It's a good one though, especially of Jane. Hopefully Callum's photos were good and I can add them on afterwards!

Thank you all for a great 2025, and see you in 2026, if not at Christmas Day parkrun.

Merry Christmas!

Laurie

Only a week until Christmas! Bring it on. Four bags of rubbish taken away

Five of us began at base and Jane insisted on leading out. As we are like to share responsibility I let Joel choose his favourite lights on Moulsham Street for a photo. He chose....Taco Bell. It did mean I could do a pretty good Jingle Taco Bells joke though. Oh deer (that makes sense if you look at the photo of me with the deer lights).

We got to the village hall and Fay shouted 'Ahoy!' for some reason which confused me immensely. Anyway, we got to work filling five bins with many leaves (between 200k and 700k I would say) being led by the literal professional in Richard. We discussed Christmas dinner, our host David has one a week in December, Christmas desserts, mince pies and more. Sallyann bragged about retiring next week (congrats!!!) while I cleaned paths and wept at the prospect of 50 more years until retirement.

We ran out of bin space and took a serious photo for our serious business. Well done all!

Next week we are getting a pint and maybe takeaway after the group run, come along!