Who'd have thought collecting leaves could be such a challenge?

The Nursery had an initial plan for the Autumn and Winter of collecting all the leaves to the edges of the playground so they could do their natural thing of rotting down to feed their former owners, the trees but had been scuppered by the wind keeping blowing the leaves all over the playground making the place quite slippery and dusty for the Nursery children. Sam, the Headteacher, and Brian, the Caretaker, have big plans to reduce the size of some of the trees, meanwhile the leaves are to be turned into fabulous mulch.

Sam thought we had too many people for the task, but lo and behold we were so efficient that we needed two more rolls of bin bags for the growing pile of leaves to be bagged.

Sarah and Craig both got stuck in on their first task whilst returners John and BRIAN! showed they're now old hands - less of the old, though!

Oodles of leaves were brushed, raked and forked into piles and leafy-handed into the 30-plus black bags (thanks to Phill for counting) with small white-boards being re-purposed as extra "resources" (see, we can so school-speak!).

Tyres were rolled, planks lifted and platforms propped up to get at as many leaves as possible and leaf* the playground neat and tidy, ready for more play times. There was even time for a quick slide and to see how very tall Vaguely Northern Darren is, sitting on a totally normal-sized chair.

<* see what i did there?>

There was time for a different route back and a catch up drink at Workout for good measure.

Bye bye, January!

When the location pin on the website moves 100m from the actual meeting point, we had a few options. 1. Assume everyone would find us anyway 2. Position TaskForce members at strategic locations to accost passers by 3. Shout out, literally shout out, first names of new GoodGymmers signed up for their first group run

We opted for number 2, although John found us as if we'd opted for number 1.

Then came the tear-jerking email from Brian that he'd cone to Queen Square but must have missed us and would see us some other time. Nooooooo! Panic! Quick reply to say we were still in the Square. And resorting to tactic 3 - shouting for BRIAN in case he (or another Brian) was still in earshot. Suddenly someone was running towards us, We shouted BRIAN ever more enthusiastically until someone pointed out it might be someone different. The pause must have been a good two seconds. Then the BRIAN calling continued. The lone runner approached ever closer. We paused once again. When he was within talking, rather than shouting, distance, we gently asked if he was Brian, ready to deny any of the shouting was us. BUT IT WAS BRIAN! Utter elation from GoodGym Bristol who set off walking and running to the BS3 Southville Community Centre where Hugh had promised us an indoor task for the chilly night, although it turned out only a few could be accommodated indoors whilst the hardy contingent were out a-sweeping in the nursery garden. All offers to swap indoor/outdoor positions were turned down and by 7.30 we'd made a mess, cleared up a (different) mess, almost cleared up the self-made mess and painted quite a lot of wall. And had loads of opportunity to chat, much of it whilst stood around leaning on brooms.

The downhill run back to Queen Square was nice and quick, the walk seemed quite chilly and the runners had already finished their stretches* and were warming up (or down) in workout when the walker arrived.

Much 10th birthday party planning ensued with a couple of great GoodGym money-raising initiatives proposed that have less-than-no prospect of ever being followed through. But if GG ever do invest in a vertical skydiving, transportable system, it was GG Bristol's idea.