I shop for Mr J most weeks and it has been noticeable that his small front garden has been filling with weeds, swamping the few plants he does have. He asked me a couple of weeks ago whether I’d be willing to help sort it out for him.

Today was the day we agreed, subject to weather. It was all relatively straightforward apart from the deep roots of the green alkanet which are everywhere in Lewisham. A bonus trip to pick up something from the pharmacy and a lightbulb change too.

And a plus for me is that my inner four year old got to ‘drive’ the DLR train back to Lewisham!

The lovely Ms L and I go back a long time, I used to work for the housing association that is her landlord. Sadly she can’t remember this now. Today’s task was to fold up and put away her Christmas tree. It took longer to find the tape to secure the box than it did to take it down. I did a few other things for her whilst I was there - change a table cloth, put a shelf back in her fridge and make her porridge- her carer usually does this but was delayed by an emergency on her previous call. A walk across Hilly Fields afterwards - that included passing some of the trees ‘herded’ on last week’s Group Run.

It was a straightforward shop for the lovely Ms Y apart from battling the winds on the way back to her flat and on my run back home.

The first thing on the lovely Mr J’s list was a request for candles. This was too good an opportunity not to attempt to re-enact the old Two Ronnies sketch for “Four Candles.’ Alas, the shopkeeper was too young to be aware of of the sketch and the other things the request might sound like - ‘fork handles’ or, bringing it into the 21st century, and spoken with a South African accent, ‘four Kindles.’

The rest of the shop was fairly standard except for a fruitless search for dried fruit up and down a very cold and quiet Deptford High Street.

On a particularly cold Monday evening in Lewisham, only the strong could be found braving the elements to gather homeless Christmas trees: that’s GoodGym!!

In order to maximise our impact, once approaching Hilly Fields the group split into 3 teams (captained by Darryl, Paul, and Steve) before proceeding to patrol their respective areas in search of discarded pine.

Despite the park already sporting 4 pretty big piles, a power hour of tree retrieval delivered a total of 28 specimens. But what of the (strictly friendly) competition between teams..? Well, the results were:

Team Paul: 7 trees Team Darryl: 9 trees Team Steve: 12 trees - congrats!

There was just enough time for a reunited group ascent of Hilly Fields, and a lovely moonlit view of Canary Wharf, before our return to Glass Mills

I always enjoy visits to the lovely Ms L, it feels like visiting an old friend. Today I got her printer connected so she could print off some documents. We then sorted out a couple of boxes of things she had brought from her old home. We went through a box of gloves, trying and testing them all to see which ones would still let her control her powered wheelchair, amidst lots of laughter. We found some photograph albums and reminisced about our respective 20s. We had such a lovely afternoon.