This year's GoodGym Ealing's Christmas party didn't encourage us to get more steps in - it was just opposite St Mary's Church, at the New Inn pub in South Ealing! Big thanks to Iram, who found and booked the venue! The room we had was nice and quiet - until we started popping the Christmas crackers!

The jokes from the crackers were a perfect, silly warm-up to the traditional GoodGym quiz, prepared by quiz masters Sevan and Iram. The prize? Chocolates - and, if you were vegan, chocolate bars. Yum!

Just as if there was not enough joy (there was!) during the quiz, Santa himself visited us. He was very secretive - we couldn't guess his identity or where he got his gifts from. From books and plush reindeer to best of the best shower kits, everyone received a little something to take back home.

What a fun and festive evening it's been!

Every community has its own traditions to celebrate festive times. GoodGym Ealing is no different. Our Christmas tradition since 2018 (with some breaks) has been kicking off the season by decorating the Christmas tree at St Mary’s in South Ealing to get the church ready for the Christmas services.

Eleven GoodGymers and one new GoodGymer-to-be were welcomed at the church by Wei Hei, Revd. Joy French and her husband, Clynt. It was a great opportunity to meet the vicar, who, although new to Ealing, showed a familiar warmth and - pun not intended - joy. We’ve been treated to some Christmas tunes, mulled wine, and minced pies, yum!

We had a Geordie Santa, The True Santa, and a bunch of helpful elves on our team. Not all the elves had expected to be following a Christmas dress code, but Thaiza got them covered! She brought all sorts of festive headwear, making everyone a bit more sparkly.

Some elves got busy decorating the tree, and others headed to the gallery for a work at height: a little bit of dusting. The good news was that our earlier session in September hadn’t left us with much dust to bust.

With Joy very pleased with the outcome of using our Christmastifying skills, the team headed to the New Inn across the road for more festivities: Christmas crackers, quiz time, and Secret Santa!

Kash & Sevan were part of a smaller team at Care4Calais today and were looking forward to a nice, warm, indoor session on a day where the weather was forecast to get wetter and wetter. With that in mind, task owner Tamzin surprised them with a pair of prams in the garden that needed to be washed down and directed Kash outside, to the hose pipe.

Last time Kash washed down prams and wheelchairs, she was given waterproof overtrousers and Crocs to stop her clothes from getting wet. The overtrousers were long gone to someone in need, so instead Tamzin rummaged around her clothing stock and found some very small biker's leathers. They should be waterproof and windproof, right? Wrong! After hosing down 2 prams, Kash was wet, but at least the prams were now clean.

Elsewhere, Sevan was working with a Care4Calais volunteer to prepare clothing packs for recipients, with most of the requests being for jackets. Understandable given the changing of the seasons. Tamzin was ready for this as the stock room now resembled an assault course. There were bags of winter coats in various sizes piled up in bags on the floor, ready to be picked and packed. Some had to be re-sized, with Kash trying each one on before putting it in the XS, S or M group.

Once all of the requests were fulfilled, the GoodGymers moved to other side of the stock funnel. Sorting donations to fill up the boxes to pick future requests from. Some sizes of clothing were running low, while others were overflowing. Tamzin recommended the netball technique for the latter, launching items onto the top of the pile ⛹️. As always, the new donations were "varied", with some stand out items being one person's collection of jumpsuits, 2 pairs of colourful Nike shoes that had been returned and a pair of quite extreme harem trousers. They were so extreme, that Sevan initially held them upside down and spent a minute wondering why there was no hole for someone's head to go through 🤦.

With requests caught up and new donations mostly sorted, Kash and Sevan left things in a good state, ready for the next set of volunteers to pick up.

Sevan's and Kash's second visit to Mr C's and his daughter's garden brought even more digging and more mud than previously. While the rain subsided when the GoodGymers arrived at the serene Northolt area, the earth in the large beds was damp and sticky.

Apart from hundreds of small weeds, Sevan and Kash found plenty of earthworms signifying fertile soil. With good progress made on clearing the beds, Mr C's daughter was planning to start growing vegetables for her dad to make sure he has a healthy diet. Sevan admitted that, while digging, he had found a small potato and re-planted it. What a fabulous start!

Pitshanger Junior parkrun celebrated a huge milestone today, their 500th event! 🥳👏 To celebrate, they'd asked everyone present to wear blue and one of the organisers had even brought cake to celebrate the 11 years that the event had been running 🎂. Four of the original volunteers from that first parkrun in 2014 were present too.

Little did they know that an elite group of 11 (co-incidentally) puddle jumpers and cake box crackers was present within the 80 finishers and 38 volunteers today. By the time that Harvey and Kash had returned from their marshalling duties, there were only crumbs left of the cake that once represented the parkrun's route. Sevan was timekeeping and his evidence was pieced together with the chocolately finger prints around the crime scene to hunt down the cake robbing culprits, some of whom are still at large 🕵️.

GoodGym will be back supporting Pitshanger Junior parkrun in 2 weeks, when there may be 11 fewer runners present. They would love to have as many volunteers as today, so please sign up to help make this brilliant event happen.

Maria joined the usual Elf runners Adam and Steph Ducat at Marble Hill in Richmond for volunteering but also for a fun run around the park. Honor ran with her son and he did great. Wet, damp and slippery. Course cahnged vs last year to have less mud, but we still had a slip and slide section in the woods. Well done to all the Elves. Warm up done then it was 3,2,1 and go for a fun session with loads of children running with their parents and some with their dogs.