Screw Fix

It was another rainy evening this week but what a lovely bunch showed up. We celebrated JKB's impending fatherhood for our Shit Prize of the Month - good luck James and Sarah! - and then got on with our running.

Tom H led a long run up to West Norwood - here's what awaited them: 15 runners headed up to the Portico Gallery to assist John in an innovative game of real life Tetris. This involved repositioning two large shelving units. But not before removing every single item from the shelves, which ranged from all kinds of fancy colourful materials to snazzy retro sewing machines.

To add an extra level of difficulty to the Tetris challenge; John requested we put everything back in exactly the same order. Even though there did not appear to be a whole lot of coherent ordering logic going on with these shelves.

Thankfully for everyone Frances came up with an ingenious three-dimensional grid mapping system that would have put the mathematicians at NASA to shame. A strong group effort later and the task was all done without a single sewing machine out of place.

Careful not to disturb the Yoga class going on below us (who curiously were being instructed to imagine themselves as a scorpion…) we made our way for home.

The final 15 headed to the brilliant Remakery, 1-mile away in Loughborough Junction: What a brillo place the Remakery is! Part workshop, part college art space vibe, part cafe - all community driven. These guys reclaim all kinds of gubbins and members can go and turn the gubbins into useful things. All sorts of projects were going on - chairs, tables, sideboards and the like being made anew. They had a PROPER challenge Anneka situation of large amounts of small bits of gubbins, mainly by way of nuts, bolts, screws etc that needed sorting from a mass pile of mess, to ordered piles of things that are almost the same. The 15 runners set about this task with Time Team-like precision. There were big, small, tiny and middle sized screw areas. There were hooks, door handles and a 'what the heck are these' areas too. After a solid 40-minutes of the most almighty sorting, team GG had made a serious dent into this possibly never-ending task. We loved it. They loved it. It was great!

On return to base, we all got to enjoy some delicious chocolate, banana and pecan cookies made by Ruth from an Ottolenghi recipe.

They're an Ottolenghi recipe! Ruth reminded us again

And with that we all went home happy that we had been so very helpful this evening.