I volunteered to marshal for the Martinshaw (nothing to do with The Professionals actor…) Woods XC race, part of the DRXC league, and hosted by West End Runners.

I had a great spot seeing runners across the M1 bridge for the small lap in Ratby, then directing them through the small gap back onto the larger loop in the woods itself, and to the finish.

This year I was sensible and took a chair, as we are positioned over an hour before the race start. I had the benefit of ‘Duvet Coat’ to keep me warm (an almost full length padded coat I bought to stop me from freezing whilst watching Leicester City. Who knew that this would be the solution to not freezing?)

Guiding runners over the bridge was not a problem, but getting them back through the tiny gate was interesting, especially when the field became more crowded and runners were jostling for position. Although there were no incidents for the runners, I was shocked to hear what sounded like several cars crashing on the M1 below the bridge!

I had to then marshal runners whilst trying to see if I needed to call the emergency services for the car crashes below! As a race marshal, members of the public seemed to think I knew what to do but this is not something that was covered in our brief.

Thankfully nobody on the XC course and the motorway was seriously injured on the day, and I can now relax.

Six Goodfymmers went to St Mathews House to wrap the kid's gifts ready for tomorrow's Santas Grotto event. A few boxed toys and a mountain of Cadbury selection boxes were waiting for us. Leese and Jimmy each cut their paper and wrapped their presents while a production line was set up with Lyndsy and Mohamed wrapping as fast as Nick and Samir could cut the rolls of paper. Cees from the centre looked after us well with drinks on arrival, mince oies and a tub of Roses chocolates. We all had a good time and wrapped the task up in two hours.

Todays team of six:Leese,Mel,Lindsay,Jimmy, Nick. Jeanette all met up at Age UK's Leicester warehouse/ store for a session at sorting,pricing and labelling clothes heading for the "99p sale" section. All items were checked for size and hung on the clothes hanger with the correct size cube. Lisa got cracking on organizing the empty clothes hangers into the size groups - the ocd'rs amongst appreciated the orderliness of the newly sorted hangers. Having done this task on a previous session Lindsay was straight into completing the task for each item: amend price, attach label, place item on clothes hanger, whereas a few of us split the job into seperate sections. Fuelled on biscuits and coffee in 90 minutes, we priced sized and sorted over 5 bags of donated clothes. The time flew too quickly, we could have carried on for a lot longer!

Today we Martin at Abbeypark who saw swans on the lake and river and at Braunstone we had Leese Jimmy and Ian all doing amazing things to support parkrun and make the world 🌎 a better place.