A lighter than usual task at Care4Calais today. Task owner Tamzin gave everyone an early finish as it was Xmas and also for good behaviour through the year. There was still plenty of work to do though and packages to prepare for recipients who are experiencing their first UK winter.

The legend that is Santa had delivered a big batch of padded jackets to Care4Calais. Just what was needed to keep everyone warm during the current spell of cold weather. Steph, Maria, Kash and Sevan opened half finished packages and squeezed jackets into each one. Lesser known fantasy figures then came to help the GoodGymers as Shoe Fairies delivered boxes of trainers, which is exactly what the next batch of requests needed.

Other legendary occurrences during the task included Kash exclaiming that she'd "never been so tall" as she carried a box on her head which hit the ceiling. Later, Tamzin told Steph and Sevan to "finish him off". A reference to fixing a poorly picked package for a child still needing a school bag, not a command to take them out!

Normal service will be resumed in January when we'll be back helping Care4Calais. Depending on your definition of "normal", that could be just as fantastical and amusing as today's session.

Sevan and Kash were back for another instalment - or shall I say installation - at Ms K's in Acton, after last week's battle against a wardrobe. Sevan, confident about their still-fresh experience in IKEA wardrobe assembly, started looking ahead, already thinking about starting the bed building, after they would complete the second wardrobe, similar to the one they had built previously. Too soon!

As the GoodGymers hadn't completed all the inside features of the first wardrobe, they spent almost half an hour building its drawers. Why did it take so long? The instructions weren't provided in the pack, so the final look of the drawer and the steps to make it happen had to be figured out. Thankfully, Sevan was pretty good at that.

Armed with a memory of the previous flatpack building session, Sevan and Kash quickly assembled the identical case of the second wardrobe, happy that all the parts fitted together right away this time. While Ms K entertained the GoodGymers with her stories about her accounting assistance and math tutoring she had offered in the past, the duo got busy building the shelves for the wardrobe number two.

Everything was going smoothly until they discovered that the last shelf turned out uneven. Sevan admitted he hadn't done his maths right when calculating the position of the hole where he was supposed to put the screws (8+9=16?), while Kash enthusiastically followed his mistake and started screwing in the fixings without double-checking the assumptions. Ooops - a bit of a blunder in front of such a math buff as Ms K!

Despite the slip-up, the GoodGymers promptly corrected the error, and soon two wardrobes stood next to each other with shelving and drawers ready to put clothes in! The doors were still missing, but the practical Ms K was happy with the outcome, knowing it enabled her to start transferring her outfits temporarily kept in the living room into her new bedroom.

Chilly Sunday morning and yes children and volunteers went out for a Junior parkrun. As the goodgmyers were early, they helped Jane setup the course. Signs were given and sone arrows were the wrong way, then a volunteer suggested to have the funnel the other way. Could we have an original park run today and have it going the other way round? Backwards running too? That would be fun and confusing for all. We decided not to go for the backwards run but for the original way of running and swapped the arrows tk the corext way. 25 Juniors collected tokens from Alan. Kash was then barcode scanning. During this time, Maria, Harveyand Steph Ducatwere making sure the children were running to correct way and also giving loads of high 5's. Then Chikako followed the last runner as she was tail walking with her daughter.

3 goodgymers met on a cold windy morning in front of Ealing Broadway Station to have a chatty but speed run to Acton Junior parkrun. We did a small loop in the park to end up doing 3.5km. Sonic speed and we were there before any volunteers. in the distance, we noticed Jane, todays ru director so we had plenty of time to help her setup for parkrun

The Run Up to Christmas 2025 is officially over. In just 25 days, incredible people have:

Run a total of 216,448km (that's 2,367km more than last year!). And it's more than FIVE TIMES AROUND THE GLOBE! Completed 46,613 activities (2,262 more than last year). That's 25,255 runs and 25,177 walks. There have also been 6 wheelchair activities. Maria and Steph Ducat joined this virtual challenge and hit and went above their targets they set for themselves. Medals are on their way. Goodgym received donations as part of the entries to this virtual challenge.

Mr G was a bit down as he hadn't seen anyone in the last week. On the up side, he'd also survived another Xmas. There was more bad news to come though as Sainsbury's were sold out of his favourite paninis and also Brussels sprouts, which they must've had a flood of before Xmas.

Despite the Brussels sprout drought, it turned out that Mr G still had most of a bag in the fridge. His usual requests for "something green" were fulfilled with cabbage and rainbow chard, with feedback on the chard pending. Everything else was delivered, including 4 more cans of baked beans to add to Mr G's nuclear war stockpile. He later said that it should have been removed from the shopping list, so next week's mission runner beware.