Bush FROGG

Tonight's activities involved a visit to FROGG (Friends of Grenville Gardens) to help them do some good. FROGG are responsible for maintaining the public park and gardens on Grenville Road, which includes a kids' play area, raised vegetable beds and lots of lovely plants.

To start the evening 23 of us lined up at Highbury Pool for a briefing with lots of news including the headline that Patrick L has recently reached 50 good deeds faster than anybody else. Well done, Patrick.

In other Patrick-related news, Patrick M was tonight's start baker and continued the trend of people bringing along homemade biscuits. Patrick had never made biscuits before but managed to make THREE DIFFERENT TYPES. Oaty ones, chocolate chips and a crunchy dark chocolate variety. They were all delicious. Who's our next baker gonna be?

We had along a massive seven first-time GoodGymmers for the evening. A big welcome from us all to Nic, Philippa, Lynette, Phoebe, Jacynth, Kat and Morten. And a separate but equally large welcome to first-timers to Islington Amy and Gus.

We split into two groups for the run up to Grenville Road. The first group took the scenic route - especially Melissa and Helen who took such a scenic route that Patrick L and Caitlin ended up forming a search party. But they got there in the end and still managed to get in 5 minutes of good-doing. They certainly got a good workout.

Jessica of FROGG had had four jobs for us to tackle for the night.

First -with daylight fast running out - we had to run around the gardens picking up any stray litter. There were a few nasty bits and bobs to be found: wrappers, cigarette butts, lollipop sticks and even a couple of syringes!

There was also a touch of hoeing to do around one of the beds and a few leaflets to deliver locally to promote the gardens.

With all that dealt with we all got stuck into the main task of the night: removing a row of stubborn bushes. We cut, snipped, lopped, chopped, heaved, grunted, pulled, yanked, twisted and cleared and made quite the impact. Plenty more left for us to do on future weeks though, and more importantly plenty of opportunity for bush-related puns. In fact, we'll play some Kate Bush next week while we work. Is that an incentive to come along?

It was dark when we finished. Actually, it was pretty dark when we started. Let's embrace the onset of winter and get the headtorches and portable floodlights out for next week. As you can see from the photos most of us are already kitted out in reflective gear.

For the journey back we split into three groups led by Patrick, Danica and Simon. Two of the groups set off at their own steady pace and the third did an interval-style workout on the way home while working on good running form. Great efforts from all.

Back at the pool we had a stretch (most of us did, Patrick L stood around trying desperately to become the fastest person to eat 50 biscuits or something) and quizzed everybody on what the best meal of the day was Lots of votes for breakfasts (apart from one "I hate breakfast!"), lunches and dinners; a couple of suppers and teas; a high tea; another type of tea which sounded fancy but I've forgotten; a biscuit break; but no midnight snacks!

We're back at FROGG for the next two weeks. Let's DESTROY those bushes.

Keep running and keep doing good,

Simon

P.S. Don't forget Paul's hill session next Sunday. Top workout guaranteed.