an energising 45mins to break up the morning at a desk.

Lots of cigarette butts and it looks like our cleaner is on holiday as this only happens when someone else cleans the streets. Thankfully I brought my gloves so I cleared all the planters.

A couple of planters had plants pulled out, which is annoying - why would people do it?!

the planters needed water but most of the planters are leaking water from the bolts/nuts so there's no way to fill up the reservoirs. I need to do aome DIY and bring filler to try and seal them.

A couple of lovely conversations as well, a lovely break from work!

P.S. forgot to bring my phone so old photo!

Three of us arrived at Frenford to help offload a supermarket delivery.

There were several crates with mixed goods. As we were sorting them out it became clear there was enough pasta to fill an entire cage with the rest on another cage. Addie grabbed the pasta cage while Ed took the rest of the food with Linda dealing with the nappies and toiletries. We then took the time to have a quick count up of all the stock.

Between the three of us, accompanied by some banging tunes supplied by Addie’s Bluetooth speaker, we got the stuff loaded and counted within an hour.

This evening we had the pleasure of welcoming not one but two lovely ladies for their first Goodgym experience - Hazna & Louise - give them a cheer!

Formalities sorted, we got stuck into the task - house keeping... We are using the facilities of Wanstead House all the time, so in return we do some tasks around the place. This time round we were asked to tidy up the car park, so armed with brooms & shovels & bins we worked out way round the car park removing lots of leaves & soil & rubbish from all round the car park.

Task done, we set off on a walk/jog to stretch our legs, chatting along the way.

Back at base Louise kindly took us through some stretches to help recover from the activities.

All done, it was time to make our way home.

Next week - extra Babybank session - lots of donations need sorting through

Due to a delay in coming back from the GG Shindig we were one person short. The job didn’t have any heavy lifting so Linda decided to go it alone.

Mrs S needed help sorting her books. As Mrs S has ADHD it was a bit difficult to get her started and to keep her focused. We decided to tackle one box at a time and created separate piles for correspondence, stationery, recycling, rubbish. books to keep and books to go. Once the system was in place Mrs S got into her stride and the more organised it got the easier it seemed to be for her. It is still a big job, we got a couple of long shelves sorted before having to pack away. It is to be hoped another session can be set up and hopefully our Shindig wanderer will have returned by then.

Metro Caring supervisor Greye will be leaving us, so it was a bittersweet shift. He will be missed. Happily, at today’s mission, AJ met a fellow former Londoner / marathon runner, Kirstyn 🏃‍♀️ AJ explained the GG concept to Kirstyn so maybe she’ll join the GG family. 🙌🏻. We had a good supply of energy bars for all to enjoy.

A typical English summer(ish) morning... in other words, rain + sun + drizzle + more rain

Ofcourse that does not deter any Goodgymmer nor Parkrunner/walker

So a set of GG'ers descended on Valentines Park to help out and/or run in prep for more GG activities...

• Ed guarded & managed the main car park entrance in his usual enthusiastic style - must be approaching 250 times by now?
• Linda rode down and braved the rain to guide a VI walker round for a lap (hence dog pic)
• Sharon G joined the scanning crew
• James stepped in on short notice to Marshall the vital first corner / 1st 2nd lap split
• Peter juggled finish tokens and handed our 426 in total

And last but not least, GG Newham Queen Hillary (sorry Sharon P) joined for the run before taking charge of a lovely local community mission later in the morning - see report here (once posted and link edited)

P.S..... animal pics courtesy of Linda, showing off the lovely sides of Valentines Park