It was another rainy evening in London when we gathered at Old Spike. After a quick warm-up, we set off on our 3K run to the Old Alleynian Rugby Club, grateful that Ian had thoughtfully arranged an indoor task to shelter us from the weather.

Our mission for the night was to tackle the changing room windows, which were certainly overdue a proper clean. Armed with cloths and determination, we scrubbed away the grime, and the transformation was instantly rewarding and the whole space felt brighter as a result.

To top it all off, Ian generously treated us to some chocolate before we headed back out into the drizzle for our run home—a sweet end to a productive evening.

Glad to pitch in for the afternoon session too!

A veggie mountain was tackled first: Crates of curly green kale, regular green kale, purple kale, leeks, cabbages, carrots, potatoes and green beans were unloaded, quality-checked and mixed ready for distribution. Fruits got the same love – unloaded, checked and crate-mixed a sizeable portion of bananas and raspberries!

Crates of thyme, rosemary, land cress and at least 50 boxes of tomatoes were then thoroughly quality-checked and safely stored in the veggie freezer.

And lastly cardboard boxes got smashed and flattened for recycling, plastic and food waste got sorted, and floors were mopped till they gleamed.

A solid GoodGym session :)

Borough Food Cooperative supports ~ 25–30 households each week with nutritious groceries that would otherwise go to waste.

It was an absolute pleasure to lend a hand to their mission! I kicked off my Monday morning by unloading a huge delivery from The Felix Project, then storing 40+ packs of milk in the freezer along with 20+ blocks of butter, neatly split into salted and unsalted. Also found homes for various tubs of Greek yoghurt, chocolate fudge and bottles of green smoothies.

The mission continued with sorting different meats – prosciutto, hazelnut pavé, salmon and chicken breast – into the right sections, before moving on to a very zen pasta task. Around 3 kg of penne was divided into 15 bags of 200 g each, with every bag labelled with an ingredient list, turning a big bulk donation into easy-to-distribute portions.

7 bags were filled clearing ivy, leaves & weeds for Ms N

On Tuesday night, I went to help out at Proud Sports community badminton session at the Castle centre in Elephant and Castle. Once I arrived, I shadowed another Proud Sports volunteer, who showed me how to greet people and check them in, into the session. Since there were not too many people signed up for the session, we also took in turns to go downstairs into the rest of the centre to promote the session, which was surprisingly popular - turns out lots of people do like Badminton, and want to play in a community sports session.

After a while, the other volunteer invited me to join in. I stayed right until the end, almost 10pm but the time went really quickly. It was really fun to connect with other people and play badminton with them. What a wholesome evening!

8 of Southwark's finest headed to Galleywall nature reserve for the first session there of the year. With some helpful handles and a lot of 'to me, to you's' the team relocate the shed to the back of the garden, to allow for a more aesthetic entrance to be planted. The team work continued in task 2, forming a daisy chain to pass rocks from the back of the garden to the pond to form the rocky bank pictured. Good job team !