Another great evening with GoodGym at Grow Baby, supporting families in need.

Led by Rachel, our team — Jana, Manasa, Jonathan, Luke and Saber — got straight to work forming a human chain, quickly moving bags upstairs and building an impressive pile by the door (with Luke keeping spirits high with marathon stories along the way!).

With that done in record time, we moved downstairs where tasks were expertly assigned:

• Shoes sorted by Manasa

• Coats and dresses organised by Jonathan

• Toys checked by Luke

• Essentials stocked by Jana

• Saber helping wherever needed

We then tackled sorting winter clothes, blankets and grow bags into storage, making great progress in just an hour. With time for one final push, the teddy bear box turned into a fun finale — with Luke and Jonathan in goal as Jana launched toys over a wall of bags!

We finished with a group selfie among the piles — tired, happy, and having achieved loads in a short time. A brilliant effort all round 👏

Over at Refugee action having run, cycled and walked over we split in to teams to sort donations.

Men’s and women’s clothing as well as new donations required sorting and categorising whilst shoes needed pairing up. As always there were a few rouge items in the wrong section that needed rehoming and a few rainbow and sparkly numbers discovered for photos.

An hour after starting John and Tom had created an incredibly neat menswear department, Emma, Anna and Ellie had got women’s wear in order, Marcus had ensured that every shoe had a partner and Adam and Claire had filtered and put away all the donations.

After few snacks (we couldn’t resist) and a group photo we said our goodbyes with the runners heading off for a lovely run along the river.

Wow. What an absolute privilege to have been a Tailwalker at Sunday's London Marathon. For those who don't know, we're a band of (very organised) volunteers who start walking at the 12-mile point, to offer support and companionship to those runners struggling (they'll finish between 7:30pm and midnight, if they make it, taking 8 to 12.5 hours to complete the course).

I finished my own marathon years ago. So to go out and help others do the same, in for them much harder conditions - it felt really good. Thanks to all the volunteers. We didn't break the 2-hour record (or any record). But it was a special day.

Best-laid plans often go awry... and tonight was one of these times. Our resilient leader Rachel had organised two tasks for the evening (as our little group is not so little anymore!) but alas one fell through at the last minute so all 13 of us ended up together at Claremont Gardens in Surbiton. Fortunately the task here was big enough to take us all and then some.

We all congregated by the dried up pond in Claremont Gardens and task owner Georgina explained that the pond needed to be stripped back of rubbish, sticks, logs and dead/unnecessary reeds so that it could be filled up again. The liner had unfortunately failed which meant, even after all the rain fall of 2026 so far, the pond was mostly dry.

Many hands really were needed for this task as there was a whole load to do. Sticks and logs were collected from the pond bed and turned into a bug hotel up on the bank; reeds were pulled up from the driest parts; Dead vegetation was removed; huge clumps of reed roots were extracted and swathes of grass were dug up, roots and all. We found a few of our amphibious friends along the way and made sure that they hopped off to a safe spot.

The hour flew by and we made great progress. The next step is to fill the pond and hope that our work means that the water holds this time! There's plenty more work to do in and around the pond so hopefully we'll be back to check it out again sometime soon.

Always such a worthwhile side quest mission. Luke gave blood and Dave gave plasma. Many biscuits were consumed in the completion of this mission :)

GoodGym turned up in force to Elm Road Park having run, walked and cycled their way there.

Upon arrival we were provided with safety glasses, masks, scrapers, chisels and sandpaper and were spread out along a concrete fence.

The task was to remove any last pieces of a mosaic, scrape off the loose paint and sand back the surface so that it was ready for painting. The paint was stubborn in some areas and we were moved around as each section progressed until each panel was quite smooth.

We will return next week when the rain will have hopefully stopped to finish any more preparation work and do some painting so everything is ready for a new mural.