T'was a wintry November eve, the crisp air heralding the beginning of something wonderful. For tonight was the beginning of Christmas...

Our annual visit to St John's court to put up their Christmas decorations is now a tradition, and for many of us, the start of Christmas. Eight Christmas GoodGym elves rocked up, just like Last Christmas, to Deck the Halls of St John's Court with trees, tinsel and lights.

Stepping into Christmas for the first time was newcomer Nat, and a first time in Bath for London GoodGymmer Katie - you a both very welcome. we look forward to seeing you again!!

With multiple locations to decorate - the Main Entrance, Common Room, and Leisure Room - there was a lot of decorating to do in just one hour. But we had plenty of help from regulars Emily, Stephen, Amy, Tanya, James and myself.

We made quick work of it, Santa would be impressed. We hope that the residents will awake to see the spirit of Christmas present as they make there way downstairs in the morning. Ho Ho Ho!!!!

How did you spend your Saturday morning? Catching up on chores? Doing the shopping? Having a lie-in? Well GoodGym Bath destroyed a shed that was blighting a local school and it felt good.

This was our second visit to Newbridge Primary School - last time we filled a skip with a shed and a load of concrete blocks that were part of the old playground. This time we did the same - without the blocks.

The grounds are huge - no wonder the caretaker needed some GoodGym assistance in keeping it safe and tidy.

It also meant we got our steps in - we walked one and a half miles pushing wheelbarrows loaded with wood and stuff between the shed and the skip.

Did I mention it felt good? Turns out smashing up a shed is extremely therapeutic. That, coupled with a trip to a nearby café, made for shedloads of fun.

When these run reports are late appearing it's almost always because I'm suffering from pun paralysis! That is to say we're supposed to add a pithy headline, preferably involving a clever pun of some sort. Or at the very least add a headline of any kind at all.

And some days they just won't pop in to your head. GoodGym writers' block is a real thing, you know!

Embarrassingly, this time I went to an AI chatbot for help. "Give me an apple themed pun", I lamely asked of it.

"What do you call an apple that's been bitten? A half baked idea" it came up with. Half-baked indeed!

I pointed out that this was a joke, not a pun, and learning from its mistake the chatbot did indeed offer a (terrible) pun this time.

Encouraged by this I asked "give me a few puns to pick from" and, noticing my accidental punnage in this, added "do you see what I did there?"

Chatbot did indeed pick (sorry!) up on this and offered a few lame picking-related puns this time. But the work was done by now. My own creative juices (sorry!) were once more flowing. This was my story. My scoop. Chatbots have their place, they're out of the box now and they won't be going back ... but we must use them wisely - not as creators to do the creative work for us, but as a sounding board to help spark our own imaginations.

Back to the task. Grow For Life have an orchard next to the Walled Garden we all know and love. Being an orchard of course, it's rather low maintenance. So I never even knew it was there.

But today they've invited their fans and friends - and there were indeed dozens of people in attendance - to come along and help in picking some of the apples, and also joining in the full end-to-end process of washing and sorting, mashing, and pressing juice.

A proper old-fashioned community of real humans getting together to help each other do something good and get something dome. Chatbots will never be able to do that (he writes...)

A pressing task indeed...

Six good gymers, including myself helped improve a derelict and unkept place. Strength, was shown through heavy lifting of heavy stone. A shed was dismantled and a brilliantly full skip was the after effect of our hard work. Many, pleasantries were exchanged and it was a rewarding enhancement of the area worked in. Good work everyone.

Five Good Gymers, not Famous, braved an early autumnal evening to My First Steps Nursery, seeking adventure.

On arrival we were greeted by Cathy and given a very quick briefing of tonight’s task: tidy the outside area and possibly weed. Left to our own devices we used our imagination and set to. Kate and Jane started picking up all the larger items casually strewn across the green, however there was treasure to be had! Silver spoons and plastic spades were our bounty which we passed to our team members to assist them with their weeding. I said we had to be imaginative, and in lieu of any adult tools, we had to make do. Ruth did a fabulous job in the baby garden, though the weeds were unfortunately a match for the plastic spade/spoon by the end of the session, it didn’t make it. Meanwhile Richard and Tanya were messing around in the mud kitchen, though not making mud pies for us to enjoy after the task, just a general tidy and weed where silver spoons were also going for the price of gold!

We managed to remove two tubs worth of weeds, and the general area looked a lot tidier, therefore I’d say mission accomplished

To be honest there wasn’t much walking for us GoodGymers at today’s task but there was a heck of a lot of it going on. Around 500 walkers took part in a 22 mile trek around Bath to raise money for Julian House - a charity working with homeless and vulnerable people and women facing domestic abuse.

It was our job to man the checkpoints - checking participants in, stamping their maps, cheering them on and presenting their well-earned medals at the finish. We also took photos and supplied dog biscuits as required.

Vicky earned a particular hurrah for getting up at the crack of dawn to do her stint.

But most of the praise should go to the fundraisers who had to tackle a punishing route in what must have been the worst weather since the event began 23 years ago. I imagine they went home wet, tired and sore but proud of their achievement.