Two GoodGymers ran from Ealing Broadway to Park Royal to bring order to the infamous alleyway along the Picadilly Line tracks. The pathway was known for continuously attracting litter. On a November night, however, the rubbish was playing hide and seek with our team. The darkness and unexpectedly large amount of leaves must have had an impact on how much litter we had found. Is it a leaf? Is it a chocolate wrapper? Are there bottles buried under the leaves?

It felt like it was already January - not because of the cold. The ratio between the soft drink bottles and the beer cans was - surprise, surprise - definitely in favour of the non-alcoholic beverages. Was it Dry January already? We still found a decent amount of evidence that drinkers of Polish beers like Żubr and Warka must have been around.

We collected everything we could see in the light of head torches and not hidden under the leaves - two bags in total in less than an hour. Four tennis balls and a jacket that someone had left on a bollard, we haven't classified as rubbish and left those items alone. Maybe someone would come back for them?

On Monday evening, Divya and Kash rushed from work to get to West Ealing for the Soup Kitchen service for the homeless. Both landed in the clothes department: Divya on mens and Kash on womens.

As the temperatures started to drop, warm jumpers, coats, thick socks, gloves and hats were in demand. Luckily, the Soup Kitchen had a decent amount of those today. The toiletries table was also well stocked up with an abundance of shower gel scents so that clients could pick their favourites.

The shift finished with wiping and folding the tables, sweeping the floor, and, of course, squeezing the bags with packed clothes into the Cupboard of Doom™. The last activity resulted in a surprisingly neatly organised cupboard - it looked so flawless that the volunteers started worrying that they had forgotten to pack something up!

On a very windy Sunday morning our GoodGymers at Acton junior parkrun did everything to prevent the scanned finish tokens from flying away. Another would-be escapee was the GoodGym flag weighed down by the shoes we collected to be recycled with Jog On. The last challenge of that morning was not letting the flyers to be blown by the wind at our third session.

After a break for a coffee, Alan, Mohamed, Sevan and Kash ventured to the streets of Acton to distribute 400 leaflets to spread the word about the Reduce and Recycle Hub before 7th of December. In the spirit of sustainability, they decided to:

• Recycle the task listing to include leafletting for another partner at the same time
• Reduce the time needed to help promote two sustainability initiatives in Acton
• Reuse the bundle of flyers they had collected after the Tuesday session for Library of Things!

The highlight of the Reduce and Recycle Hub flyer that caught the public's attention was the Jolly Christmas Jumper Swap. Hopefully the residents so excited about replacing their last year's jumpers with a new (preloved) outfits will find their way to the hub in the couple of weeks.

The Library of Things features didn't go unnoticed either!

Lady 1: £8.50 for a wet and dry vacuum per day is good.
Lady 2: If only I could hire someone to do it!
Sevan: You can't hire the people only the stuff.
Lady 2: For enough money, you can hire anyone.

Any takers?

Five GoodGymers responded to the last-minute call to recycle their old sports shoes at Acton junior parkrun. Some of us couldn't make it the day before to the very successful shoe recycling initiative by We Run Ealing and GoodGym at Gunnersbury parkrun, so we gave those GoodGymers a chance to drop their shoes while volunteering at Acton juniors anyway.

Harvey made the most of both sessions: taking the lead in organising the Saturday collection at Gunnersbury with Tom and Steph, then bringing his daughter's shoes to Acton junior parkrun on Sunday. Chikako brought a couple of her daughter's sports footwear, and Sevan and Joanna donated their old running shoes. Kash, after a long wait, finally found a way to recycle her worn trainers that were getting a bit too slippery to run to GoodGym missions on pavements covered with wet leaves.

Ten collected pairs of used sports shoes will be packed up into a box early next week and sent to Jog On for reusing or recycling. That's twenty shoes saved from landfill!

Across the country, it was a Bert windy today and Acton Park was no different. Sevan and Mohamed arrived early to find Geoff, today's Run Director, almost finished with the course set up. The funnel poles were in the ground and Mohamed placed the "Caution Runners" signs at the top and bottom gates. Everything else was at risk of blowing away, including the runners and volunteers, so there were no cones to mark the course or lightweight table for the token sorting.

Harvey took advantage of the conditions, deciding to fly down the hill to the start line, where there were a good group of brave runners. 38 of them were blown around the course including Chikako who was the VI guide and Alan, whose tail walker tail was blowing in the wind. They flew past Mohamed and Joanna who were marshalling. They then tumbled over the finish line and into the funnel, where the other GoodGymers were at work. Sevan and Harvey were timekeeping, Divy was handing out finish tokens and Kash in her favourite role scanning barcodes.

There was little to pack up, so results were quickly submitted and then it was onto collecting all of the shoes that were brought for recycling.

Four GoodGymers arrived at a new task location this afternoon to sort donations and prepare clothes packs for refugees and asylum seekers in the local area. Care4Calais work to provide suitable clothing for those who arrive in the country without it and had asked for help to work through the bags they'd received.

Task owner Tamzin gave Kash, Steph, Divy and Sevan an intro to the charity, then guided them to different rooms, each of them piled high with boxes and clothes. Everything had it's place, but they had to know the system to know where that place was. Learning that took time. More-than-1-session sort of time.

There were 2 main tasks to get started with. Divy and Steph were asked to make up clothing packs for male clients. Meanwhile, Kash and Sevan would be sorting and sizing women's clothing donations.

Team Man's clothing packs were made up for a specific client to their size. Each one included underwear, a pair of trousers, t-shirts and a hoodie, which should have been straightforward. Actually, Divy spent a good chunk of the task trying to locate specific items that had gone walkabout so that the duo could keep building.

One floor up, Team Woman were separating donations by size and type, with a pile each for bottoms, tops and warm outer clothing. Any men's or children's clothes that they found were separated out, along with anything impractical. Part way through, Sevan was reassigned to organising space in the stock rooms and then onto sorting children's jackets

By the end of the task, some creative sourcing allowed Divy and Steph to create all of the mens' packs on the list. Kash had managed to process the women's clothes and Sevan had a neatly organised rack of storage bags containing children's clothes ordered by age. Everything was prepared for the next group of volunteers to pick up and run with.

The November conservation day at Grove Farm meant resuming the everlasting war on brambles to allow the wood anemones to flower in spring. The landscape of the usual blackberry-anemone battlefield looked somewhat different than in previous years, with seemingly new vegetation sprouting.

Sevan: "Stupid question: Have those trees been here before?"
Anna: "Yes. We coppiced them 3 years ago, and now they got more bushy."

Sevan and Kash ran 8.5 km to Grove Farm from their earlier mission in Acton, stopped only by a cup of coffee in Ealing, while Penny took a combination of public transport and walking through the foresty parts of Sudbuty Hill. The GoodGymers met Anna, Mike and Olena - Friends of Grove Farm, and Sue and Fred - members of several other volunteer groups.

Penny decided on the more demanding way to cut brambles: manually, using the shears, while Sevan paired with Mike and Kash with Olena. In each of the duos one person had a hedge trimmer and the other a rake. The pairs worked in absolute harmony, the rake pulling the brambles away and the trimmer cutting through them effortlessly.

The results of the work of the entire team were excellent. A couple of similar sessions in the winter months should keep the brambles at bay and let the wood anemones bloom when the spring comes.