After a productive morning, Cathy, armed with a litter picker and a couple of waste bags, set off for cleanup after the Eco-Festival at St Margarets. When she reached Moormead and Bandy Recreation Ground, she found Kash from GoodGym Ealing, sitting on the grass. Kash claimed she ran for 70 minutes South for the community mission, although it was more likely she has just woken up in the middle of the site, after a series of Saturday garden parties. Another Ealing GoodGymer washed ashore on the Thames riverbank was Sevan who couldn't come up with a reasonable excuse for misplacing his GoodGym t-shirt. The description of his erratic one-hour bike ride from the South didn't make much sense, so chances were that also ended up in Twickenham by accident. Apart from bringing their gardening gloves from yesterday, the Ealing crew seemed to be totally unaware of the Bring Your Own Bags (and litter-pickers) policy. Luckily, Cathy had a waste bag to spare and a cunning plan up her sleeve.

The Ealing people were not the only ones whose stories didn't add up. Cathy claimed she participated in the prep for the festival the day before and that the fair was a massive event, covering the whole recreation ground. There was absolutely no evidence to support that statement. The green space looked pristine and litter-free, just like the Eco Festival never happened! A message from Louisa from the Eco Festival team explained that the fantastic cleaning job was already done in the morning by the council that have beaten the GoodGymers to the task.

Cathy, unmoved by the situation, was determined to do good for the respectable neighbourhood of Richmond (rather than head straight to a coffee shop) and came up with plan B, which involved hitting the streets of Twickenham to hunt for litter (and then going to the coffee shop). While Kash quickly secured a waste bag from Cathy, there was no extra bag left for Sevan who, apparently in need of the hair of the dog, scavenged for last night's leftovers of drinks which have been meticulously documented - as you can see. Despite that our Drunken Master was doing a pretty good job collecting the rubbish from the streets, Cathy and Kash continued to make fun of him until he rightly pointed out the very scant history of Kash's litter-picking endeavours.

After filling the bags mostly with chocolate wrappers, plastic cups and very few used facemasks, and dropping them by the bin at the recreation ground, the trio ended up in the second-best (according to Cathy) coffee place in the nearest area. After a good chat, Cathy had to head back home to continue with her work but she left the Ealing team some great recommendations of things to visit and eat in the area. Cathy was the star of the day and the community mission went ahead mainly thanks to her planning skills and determination.

The 43rd St Margaret’s Fair promised to be a day of fun for all (even if poor T could no longer bring hunter after her foot injury :-( get well soon T!), and our task was to help set up the Eco Festival.

A big part of being ecologically minded is, of course, making sure we deal with our rubbish properly. So our major task for the morning was to label and put out bins for different kinds of waste. But before that, we had to make sure the water coolers were well supplied with water to keep all the fair-goers hydrated.

As anyone who works in an office is likely to know, water cooler bottles make for excellent weight-training aids, and we got stuck in carrying them across to the coolers. Chris even gave us extra training by encouraging us to carry them over to the other side of the fair, only to find there were plenty there so we got to carry them back again. Maena particularly enjoyed this.

All cool with the coolers and it was onto the bins. Louisa explained where we should put them and which bags were for which kind of waste. JP got to work designing signs for the non-recyclables bins to encourage people to find a recycling bin, while the others set about distributing the bins for maximum litter-collecting effectiveness across the fair site.

There were sights to behold as we did our work, including the “Self-made man” sculpture carved into a tree trunk, and Salwa’s ice cream van side hustle…

Louisa was delighted with our efforts and took a group picture for us before we went out various ways in search of good coffee or cute doggies. Hope everyone going enjoys the fair!