Gloves will tear us a path

Tonight, three GoodGymmers met up in Camden to help a care home clear part of their garden.

Connor, Emily, and I were all running slightly ahead of schedule as we converged on the care home. Having never met each other before, we spent a few minutes introducing ourselves before saying hello to the care home manager.

Thankfully, today's task was very simple: we were to destroy everything! (Or at least everything within a loosely defined area, which is almost as satisfying). This meant that we could largely not care about our impact on the garden, which felt strangely ironic when working in a care home.

Regardless, we cracked on with our semi-wanton destruction. Emily got to grips with clearing the ivy crawling across the floor, Connor made quick work of rooting out a stump in the ground (he swore the ground was like concrete, but the alacrity with which he did it suggests otherwise), and I embraced snapping limbs off trees (discovering, as I did so, a hitherto unknown conditioned response of saying "oops" whenever I snapped something successfully 🤷🏼‍♀️) Although there were several tools available, I was especially glad of the gloves provided, as we largely relied on our hands to clear the area of greenery, snap any overly long sticks, and bag up the debris.

After an hour of work, we had accumulated as many bags of green waste as you could snap a stick in, and decided we had impressed ourselves enough to finish up. We spent a few minutes clearing the tools away, before saying goodbye to our hosts.

It was lovely to meet you, Connor and Emily, and I hope to see you at Camden again soon! 😊