No, I am not referring to the team chatting away while going down the road. instead it is about the squeaky noises my picker made, which caused one of the other ones to wonder about birds being out in the darkness... 🤣😇

Total score for the evening: * 7 bags of litter * 2 NO2 canisters * 1 gas tank * pile of car bits

and we could have filled lots more bags, sadly...

With the weather being pretty decent, about 450 people popped down to Valentines Park for their parkrun fix.

Ed did his usual at the car park entrance. Linda was released from her usual guiding duties and enjoyed a run instead. James ran, joined Ed for a while and helped clearing up the funnel. Barcode scanning for me.

In 2 weeks time the busy 450 will seem like nothing - Valentines day falls on a Saturday...

The apricity of the day was not lost on us when 8 of us got together at Valentines Parkrun. Four of us volunteered, Sharon at the Boathouse, where the 2nd lappers and finishers need to go in different directions, Ed was in his usual carpark spot and Linda was VI supporter. The volunteer roster was surprisingly full so AJ chose to flit between Ed and Sharons posts, when they got busy, the others chose to run instead.

As AJ is not often in the country we then moved on for a sociable coffee and catch up at the local spoons.

Lovely having everyone together, looking forward to the next one.

The Green King pub chain sets up a #tub2pub challenge every year, inviting people to drop off their (empty) tubs from the different chocolate selections consumed over the festive period.

These will be recycled and money donated to MacMillan support.

As the pictures show, Linda was definitely more successful than me... I blame it on a weeks leave after New year, stopping me from rescuing more tubs at work!

Very much hydrated and fed I made my way to the West End Donor Centre, only to find the door locked and lights out.

A knock on the door did get attention - turns out a water pipe had burst, ground floor out of action. Unfortunately it also impacted on the 1st floor, with a lack of water to wash or flush. So all appointments were cancelled.

What is a man to do than to pop round the corner to the pub to hide from the rain, in the company of the #ThursdayMurderClub? Open fire was a nice surprise

A new year, same favourite task - Babybank is back!

So some of the usual suspects gathered at Wanstead House to welcome the lovelyNavratti for her first ever Goodgym experience.

After and initial chat Navratti, James & Linda set off while I waited a few more minutes to see whether Sher would make it down as well. sadly this wasn't the case so I chased the other three down to the babybank, where Natalie and later Jo made their own way to.

It seemed the Christmas break had put some things out of sequence, the lovely laminated labels to separate the age ranges were nowhere to be found. But luckily host Adam found post-it notes!

As always, the amount of bags waiting seem daunting but once again just under the hour all were sorted and it was time to pack up and put all away in the main room for others to do part 2 of the process.

Thanks all for joining in on quite short notice - next sessions are being planned, details to follow