Whilst cycling yesterday, I noticed a whole bunch of rubbish strewn about my local park. Not on my watch!

But, I had places to be yesterday. I went out to tackle the waste today. Only, someone had beaten me to it. The park was clean!

This should be something to celebrate I suppose.

So, whilst on a longer than expected plod to fill up a litter bag, I decided to work out both arms equally. I'm right handed and use the litter picker in my right hand. I switched it to my non dominant left hand. I was like a deer on ice, or a deer picking litter, or a deer on ice picking litter. It was slow and cumbersome. I do not recommend.

Maybe it was my previous over zealous litter picking that lessened the life of my picker. Maybe it was the fact the litter picker was bought initially as a grabber when I broke my ankle that strained it. Or maybe it was using it badly in my left hand which killed it off.

Because, it broke. It no longer has the ability to grab. It is an ex litter picker.

The trash hero has now become the trash.

We put on our handy hats and got stuck into building a flatpack cat playground complete with hammock, scratch posts, snoozing dome and scramble net. All to keep an energetic feline friend out of mischief!

I cycled to Cardiff Junior parkrun today (because I overslept and wouldn't have walked there in time).

Originally I was down to marshal at the 'bowls club' position (which is under development into some new type of sports area). But, the run director this week needed to do a swap around. I ended up in charge of 'playground' with a volunteer doing their Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award. Normally 'playground' belongs to one marshal in particular, but she was away this weekend. Setting up the playground spot is easy though, because this volunteer literally wrote the 'book' on it (by laminating a couple of instruction photos).

The set up went well, the juniors had fun and the Duke of Edinburgh volunteer learnt a new role.

Whilst it was always known on some level, it's becoming painfully obvious that these streets won't clean themselves.

In order to try and reach my 500th good deed by Cardiff and the Vale's 10th anniversary, I need to do around 7 missions a fortnight. This would be very difficult to achieve, were it not for being a litter champion and seeing the state of the streets around me.

I had a bit of a plod Inbetween returning from Cardiff Junior parkrun and a friend's baby shower.

Today the most interesting piece of trash was a broken record. I also made friends with a cricket / grass hopper / interesting insect.

I collected three bags in total within less than 1/2 mile of walking. Boo.

Not the weather that we'd hoped for, thankfully the rain was just fine so the painting was still on. We set off on our route, 5 runners heading along the Taff embankment enjoying the Summer greenery. Meanwhile our 2 walkers made their way on a slightly shorter route to the task.

Our task organiser had already set up and was ready and waiting for us, Michael got the goodgym gloves out of his bag whilst showing off the lovely goodgym running jacket. We each got handed a brush and pot, then we made our way to fill our pots with the railing paint. We had three large fence panels to paint, and decided that this was the day that we would finish the task.

Focus

Never has there been such concentration at a task, with a goal in sight there was no stopping us. We smashed our way through the task, finally finishing the panels. We had just enough time to get another helping hand in, there was a new sign to put up so we all jumped in and managed this extra task.

We said our farewells and made our way back to the glassworks, ready for an evening of games and giggles.

I went out around my local streets on Wednesday evening to do a quick litter pick. At least, that's what I planned to do.

I had chosen Wednesday evening, as Wednesday morning is the day the household waste and recycling is collected on my street.

Despite the best efforts of our council waste collectors, they are no match for Welsh wind and rain, or seagulls. There was bound to be some debris escaping.

I soon came across a particular grubby pathway. It can be easy to feel bad about the state of the world (meant very literally here, or should that be litterally?) but when you can see the proof of your efforts it all becomes a bit easier.

I soon regretted trying to clean up an exposed bin bag placed optimistically next to a bin. It showed signs of a seagull assault. The bag turned out to be rather heavy with food, liquid and something heavy and large. But, nevertheless, I persisted. The street looks slightly better, at least.

The most interesting bit of trash I found was part of what looked like some coving, or maybe part of a fire place. How did it end up on a patch of grass?