Hands are empty and all the flyers are there

It was a weekend filled with great British poetry at GoodGym Ealing! After the Burns Night celebration on Saturday night, where four GoodGymers offered their waiting and dancing skills, Sunday morning brought a mission at Acton's Poet's Corner.

The GoodGym team set off on a Chaucerian pilgrimage to deliver the news about next week's Reduce and Recycle Hub to the residents of streets named after famous poets, playwrights... and trees. Bryon, Madhan, Sevan and Kash accepted a challenge to distribute 500 leaflets in the neighbourhood - more than lines in Act One of Macbeth! There were enough flyers to deliver them to the houses on Shakespeare Rd, Chaucer Rd, Spencer Rd, Woodhurst Rd, Myrtle Rd, Cowper Rd, Cumberland Rd, Cumberland Park, and part of Acacia Road.

Sadly, the residents of some of the streets - in particular, the one dedicated to The Bard of Avon - were not so keen on receiving the invite to the event in a written form (we saw a number of letterboxes with "No junk mail" sign). Maybe a recitation about the event from a stage is the right way to deliver the message - just like with Shakespeare's plays! We haven't followed Shakespeare's famous quote: Leaflet sought is good, but given unsought is better and respected residents' wishes about not receiving flyers. That extended our Comedy of Errors in which sometimes we found out about "No junk email" only after reaching the doors of the basement flats hidden around the corners. Nevertheless, we welcomed the extra steps up and down. After finding ourselves on the street with big houses with more than one flat, we noticed that our stacks of leaflets finally started to shrink!

The epilogue of our play took us to Churchfield Road just at the right time - our hands were empty and ready to grab a well-deserved coffee. A few of us stayed in the area and discovered a new, great café - we won't keep it a secret from those coming to Acton-based community missions!