A fabulous group of keen runners met promptly at 6.30 pm on Monday to run to our task! We were all looking forward to our second week at Pagoda Arts Centre, helping them prepare for their Chinese New Year celebrations. We completed a lovely 2km run through the Chinese Arch and recieved some enthusiastic cheers from passers by.

It was the night before the New Year, but unlike the night before Christmas, lots was already stiring at the centre on our arrival.

After being joined by the rest of the group we had some quick introductions and the all important safety briefing!!! The task owner, Zi Lan, gave us our directions along with some education about the three core symbols of the Chinese New Year celebrations; longevity, good fortune, and, prosperity. We were then given free reign in hanging and decorating lots of lovely artwork and decorations including setting up the display on their main feature wall!

We split off into groups, with various people measuring, planning, hammering and decorating and others assisting in moving and organising items that needed to be stored away for the festivities.

After a lot of planning, hanging and organising, we all came together at the end to finalise the main feature wall. It was lovely to see the wall finished by the end of the task and even better to complete it as a team.

I was delighted that most of the runners were happy to go back to the suitcases the long way, resulting in a total of 4 kilometers run together. A great success all round!

11 goodgymers headed to Pagoda Arts Centre on Henry Street on a cool night. It felt like there was a hint of spring in the air. The front of the centre had a snake decoration around the doorway for 2025 and in a couple of weeks the Chinese luna calendar will usher in the year of the fire horse. There were many tasks to take on to get the centre ready for the celebrations. Ellie and Sallyanne cleaned inside the centre, Nasser moved boxes and put up pictures, Liam and Laura cleaned and cleared the entrance, Bekah, Leo and Jess did some up hill gardening and litter picking, me and Sophie cleared the car park of leaves and litter and Steph got to grips with a pile of papers that needed shredding in a temperamental shredder. All while a tai chi class was in progress which we tried hard not to interrupt. We were rewarded after our tasks with Chinese tea and chocolates.

This Monday we were back helping Mulgrave Street Action Group with their Urban Space Community Garden. After our litter picking efforts last week, the area was now nice and clear and ready for the next step - digging up all the pesky weeds! Our first challenge was actually identifying the weeds and minimising unnecessary plant casualties. Khan had far too much faith in our weed spotting abilities and was surprised when further clarification was required. As Bekah rightly pointed out though, the definition of a weed is not set - a poppy could be considered a weed in a field of sunflowers! After decanting all the required equipment from the shed, we were ready to get cracking with the gardening…or so we thought….It turned out the pile of binbags we had formed was merely a collection of plastic aprons! Very handy for a painting task I guess, but not so much for collecting weeds in. Luckily eagle eyed Chris spotted a roll of bags camouflaged amongst the pile and we were able to crack on with the task at hand. Whilst the majority of the group started tackling the weeds, some of the stronger members got to dumping all the litter bags from last week and the contents of a green bin (which unfortunately passersby had been using as a general rubbish disposal place) into the skip. As 8pm approached, the garden was looking much clearer with plenty of space for the new planting planned for our next visit. Khan was very pleased with the result and grateful as always for all our help. After taking the all important group photo we headed on our way, looking forward to returning to the garden in a months time!

We safely teetered down the hill on our first snowy-icy session for 2026 with run leader Sallyann showing how to do it with abundant balance!

It still felt Christmassy with...

• a layer of ice under a dash of snow

• zero temperature

• northern light photaes with our crazy head torches (courtesy of our fab photoers Steph & Naser & Leonardo)

• also the Christmas chatterings of course!

It was lovely catching up with each other after the Christmas break.

Also we met some lovely new members Amani and Karen , of the amazing Siân noless.

Welcome, welcome and we hope to see more of you in 2026. We also welcomed our newly stolen member from Islington too Alison - yeah for us!

Elaine arrived and explained we had done such a good job on the nettles and thistles it was now time to tackle some of the floor covering weeds too hopefully to give some of the non-weeds a chance in the spring. Those floor covering weeds also included litter which always a joy to clear up!

Seven bags later we felt we had made a good start to 2026 and put to bed our last days of 2025.

Thank you all for turning up in the cold and giving that good doing warmth and I cannot wait to spend more of my 2026 doing good with you guys and guyettes xxx