North London West London Mission Mission

16 of us ROCKED up to Highbury Pool this Bank Holiday Monday glad that the rain had stopped.

• We welcomed first timer Hannah. Wahoo!

• We congratulated Ryan on running the London Marathon. Yeay!

• We cheered Patrick for having been GoodGymming for a whole year (and doing over 180 good deeds in that time!). Whoo!

• We took delight in the announcement of a new type of custard available in the supermarkets. Delight!

Off we went to West London Mission, which is of course in North London and very very very close to our meeting point. This was our third visit and our job today was to prepare two areas for planting later in the week. We had to weed, turn the soil over and remove rock, rubble and even boulders.

We stopped for an (expensive) Lemon Puff biscuit and recorded everybody's favourite holiday. The luxury of having a "small" group of only 16 meant that everybody got a say. Here's the results:

• Caitlin - Easter. She uses the extra bank holiday to get an extra long holiday in.

• Lucy - August Bank Holiday. It's unexpected

• Adam - Both of the May ones. It shows that summer's coming.

• Edith - Any!

• Hannah - Christmas. Needs no explanation.

• Simon - Also Christmas. Can't go wrong with it.

• Patrick - Butlins. As long as there's a buffet there.

• Ceiran - Summer Holiday

• Bella - Birthday. Not just hers. Anybody's

• Aidan - Beach Holiday

• Graham - August Bank Holiday

• Will - Friday 5pm! The bonus is there are 52 of these a year

• Frances - Easter. 4 day weekend!

• Beth. Another vote for Christmas. A whole 2 weeks off.

• Ryan - Boxing Day. Family and football is all he needs

• Kike - Skiing

So, there we go. Looks like Christmas wins it.

With the garden looking very ready for crops we sped off to Highbury Fields where we split into two groups. Aidan describes his long run:

A bigger group for the longer run this time around. We set off on the run with Emirates as the goal (pun intended). For the lap there was a choice of either interval running between the markers or running a steady pace, shockingly everybody chose the steady pace! Heading back a few of the group felt a bit competitive and tackled the short hill sprint before we finished off with a half lap of Highbury Fields.

And Patrick led coney fun. First up it was a cone relay race and then Rock, Paper, Scissors, THEN, we INVENTED a brand new cone game that involves running and collecting cones, but also throwing them. We need a name for this game and Kike suggested a Twitter poll. Check out @ggisling later today.

Top night of tasking. Will see some of you at Hackney at the weekend and the rest next Monday when we're going to Barnsbury Community Centre.

Toodaloo the noo ,
Simon