We had a great turn out on bank holiday Monday. Together we filled wheelbarrows with sand and delivered them (along with rake puns) to complete the path through the woods.

There's been a theme this week of suppliers failing to deliver the correct items to our beneficiaries (see armchair mission for Mr G of earlier this week). Only as I put the two halves of the divan base together on the floor (whilst following the instructions...) did it become apparent that the two halves were mismatched - one had plastic locking brackets, and one had a metal bar/pin mechanism, and so it was impossible to lock the two parts together.

I explained all this to Ms S, who said she'd go back to the supplier, but in the meantime was keen that I "made her bed" so that she at least had somewhere to sleep on. I told her that if she was successful in getting a correct replacement half that would fit properly with the other, then GoodGym would happily return to complete the task.

This week's task was led by fellow GoodGymer, Paul, who had signed up to the Surfers Against Sewage Million Mile Clean - equipping us with some professional litter-picking garb and turning us into bona fide citizen scientists. The mission? To clear (a corner of) Finsbury Park of litter, and play a bit of brand bingo - submitting data on which brands were littering our park.

Steph Ducat, Louise, Da Marcus, and Mehmet ran down from Arsenal Community Hub together, meeting the others at the South East gates of Finsbury Park to get started on the task.

Since becoming a run leader, I've wanted to re-start the old warm-up ritual of doing a register, each person saying their name and then answering a random question. Finally, it began last night - and with a question that turned out to be more apt than I'd realised: "what's your favourite drink?".

Paul, who's preferred tipple is JD & Coke, managed to find not one but three (sadly empty) bottles of Jack Daniels littered around the park's borders; and Louise, who favours Strongbow Dark Fruits, also hit her jackpot, as did Da Marcus with a can of Iced Tea. Sadly I didn't find any kombucha bottles littered around Finsbury Park... 😆

We were treated to an incredible red sunset, and even attracted some questions from other park users about how they could get involved and host similar litter picks in their areas.

Altogether we collected 5 sacks of litter, collectively walking 5.6 miles as we picked - in Paul's words: "legendary stuff 🙌🏻!"

There was lots of excitement for next week's session building paths in Caledonian Park - see you there?

Today we visited a resident of Islington to help clear weeds from her garden, Ewa and I that is pronounced Eva.

This means the resident will be able to enjoy her garden again, unfortunately she isn't able to manage the work due to health issues.

A lovely person who has lived in this area for many years and was really pleased with our efforts.

Last night's task was a true workout, carrying sleeper after sleeper down to the bottom of the garden, ready to be used to construct a stage for the annual Olden Community Garden music festival.

It took 6 GoodGymer's to lift and lug each sleeper, and a lot of good communication and coordination to avoid any disastrous injuries. We didn't quite fulfill Charles' high ambition of relocating the entire pile, but after shifting 9 sleepers, I think it's fair to say we'd all had a good work out and felt pretty pleased with ourselves. I can certainly feel it in my arms today!

Great work to Jennifer for getting stuck in on her first session (welcome!). Aside from some seeing many faithful GG Islington regulars, it was great to meet Denzel from GG HQ, and Ernestas, local coucillor and long-time GG-er.

See you at Finsbury Park next week!?

A light and easy, feel-good lunch time task, helping to clean up after the weekly foodbank collection session - stacking shelves, sweeping floors, and folding tables. There were lots of volunteers on hand, including three from GoodGym - many hands made lite work. And we all got to go home with some surplus mangos and fresh bread - bonus! (the photo is from a previous session, I failed to get any pics!)