Scone with the wind

Brrr. The early arrivals were a little concerned that numbers might be down this evening thanks to a dip in temperatures, but it turned out that the best way of staying warm this winter is to get out and do some good deeds.

No first timers this evening, but on their first visit to Islington were Kevin and Rachel. Rachel was so keen that despite two broken ribs and being unable to run she met us at the pool then travelled to the task and back vehicularly.

After a quick warm up and cheering Paul for recently completing 100 good deeds and John for doing his first coach run we split into three groups - fast, medium and philosophers - and travelled the 3.2k northbound to Caxton House Community Centre

On our journey to the centre we discussed how you should pronounce "scone". Is it scone or scone? Ameachi believed that those born north of the river would opt for scone and those south of it would go for scone, but Meg - hailing form Cambridge, which is well north - put shame to this theory by explaining that she opted for scone. Evie, with English as a second language, preferred scone which suggests that this is the better pronunciation (otherwise why would they teach it that way?). Besides, scone is better for puns and scone just sounds too posh. A vote at the end of the evening decided matters for us with scone the clear winner***

The job for the evening was to give Caxton House a bit of a clean. Steve and Graham grabbed feather dusters and set about de-cobwebbing ceilings and beams, those who preferred the "scone" pronunciation nipped outside to give windows and grills a good old clean and those who felt that "scone" rolled off the tongue more naturally grabbed buckets of soapy water and scrubbing brushes and did their best to remove various obscenities (possibly scribbled by Debbie and her dodgy mates - see photo evidence) from the stairwell walls. A massive thanks to Sue for being such a wonderful host as always.

Twenty odd minute later things were sparkling so we blew Sue some kisses and headed down to Emirates for our TIME TRIAL. It was a bit breezy, so hopes for PBS were not high.

First finisher from last month, Paul, repeated his performance (with a little help from Richard, who jumped out of the letter "A") with a time of 2:11 and was closely followed by Islington first-timer Kevin. First lady over the line was Alex in 2:45, with Lucy on her heels. Frances put an immense sprint finish to beat Steve over the line. Great performances from everybody, and we can knock off 15 seconds for the new barrier we had to navigate, another 10 seconds because of the wind, and probably another 10 seconds or so because we were tired from working so hard. Basically, everybody is a world record holder.

We congratulated ourselves with the tiny chocolate-filled Korean biscuits "Kancho" before jogging back home.

We are double tasking next week.

See you there,

Simon

**Please purchase a copy of the audio transcript of this run report "Scone, scone, scone"* (thank you Richard) so that this paragraph makes some sense.