Southwark News

• An amazing weekend for racing - Emily ran her first marathon, Girija smashed her half marathon goal, Emma ran her first half marathon (first ever race!), Harry ran his first half marathon and Nichola ran the Royal Parks half. Blimey! An incredible story from York marathon where GoodGym York supported Sean, a key part of their community with terminal cancer who may not run a marathon again. Read about this amazing story here.

• 1st December we are hosting the GoodGym London Christmas Do at The Old Library on Burgess Park. We'll be having a decoration-making party. Watch this space! Sign up for the party here.

• Fancy a long run? Run with GoodGymers on 17th November. It's a ring around Southwark and there'll be pizza and beer at the end - sign up here.

• Next week we're varnishing the floor at Theatre Deli! It's a 6km round trip - sign up here. Don't forget Halloween we're dressing up hooray!

That's enough of the business

Last night we gathered at Old Spike and after a little confusion related to Tobias Menzies (long story ask me next week) we set off. Just under 3km there taking a route with a mean gradient we got to Crisis where a tired Anca was delighted to see us. She'd been on her own all day so was thrilled we were coming to help out. We split into groups:

• Tagging donations

• Dressing mannequins

• Organising the shop floor

• Tidying the back room

• Tagging up jewellry

A big hello to Ruby, Phoebe and Jeff who joined us for the first time last night. Great job!

It was a lot of tasks to get through and whilst we didn't quite finish tagging up all the donations and jewellry we got loads done which will make life so much easier for Anca and will mean great things for the shop.

Great work team!

On Halloween the shop is hosting a musical evening - canapes, prosecco and Musicians Against Homelessness. It'll be an amazing evening, you can go along after our task (although we'll be hitting up Batch ourselves...!). Check it out here.

Looking forward to seeing you next week.

Lucy J

As the mist settled on Lewisham, 22 runners covered just over 5k and cleared, dug and weeded at St Hilda's Church.

We were missing a few of our regular runners tonight, which might have had something to do with all the racing that went on over the weekend. It's definitely race season, with representatives at the Yorkshire Marathon/Ten Miler (Emma), the Royal Parks Half-Marathon (Clare) and also at the cross country (Bradley and Conroy) - well done to everyone who raced, especially yesterday, when the conditions were horrendous! We also had runners representing us as pacers at Catford parkrun, and a group of us had the pleasure of unveiling the new drinking fountain in Ladywell Fields, with the Mayor of Lewisham, Damien Egan. I was also happy to share the news that we were successful in our bid for some funding to allow us to buy some portable lights, to help us work safely throughout the winter - a very big thank you to Jacqueline, who represented us at the Lewisham Central Ward Assembly. So, quite a wide variety of things going on!

Another big week for new faces (how will I remember all these new names?!), with Lewisham Love going to Rosie, Joe, Ana and Cameron.

Weed better get a move on!

Today's warm-up involved a bit of heads, shoulders, knees and toes (knees and toes) and then we were off towards Crofton Park. We have worked previously with Crofton Garden, alongside the railway station platform and this week we were visiting St Hilda's Church with their assistance (and tools!). We were met by Kay, who showed us to our area for the evening. We quickly split into two groups, one working on the path to the right of the entrance, weeding, digging over and then digging-in compost. Along the other edge were the rest of the group, weeding, pulling up, cutting back and clearing away fallen leaves.

Feeling inspiered

As we work, we also like to chat and this week Emma was causing us all to contemplate our dinner, as she talked about pies (really, I was so disappointed not to be eating pie for my dinner). Another distraction came in the form of an amphibious visitor, when Helen uncovered a lovely frog! We all pondered why he/she was here, with there being no obvious water source, but settled on the assumption that little Kermie was hanging out near a drain, enjoying the shady cover of the shrubs. Pretty soon we were gathering up sacks (lots of them!), putting away gloves and tools and trying to find a good enough light source for our group photo.

Running back through a misty/mizzly Ladywell, we arrived back at our start point with enough time for a quick fitness session. Everyone loves a bit of HiiT, right? Just one round tonight, with high-knees, jumping squats, burpees (collective groan) and mountain climbers. Oh yes. Great work from everyone and great work on the planks too ;)

Next week we are off to Hither Green, where we have two projects to work on, one at Springbank Community Garden and the other on the embankment of the train station. Bring gardening gloves and head-torches if you have them! Sign up here to join in.