Shear Delight

Anyone passing by Coffee is My Cup of Tea last night around 7pm will have been greeted by a spectacle of (almost) overwhelming beauty: a small army of tanned, toned and energised runners, the majority of them decked out in official GoodGym t-shirts.

With two different tasks in two different locations to complete, the Hackney crew divided into teams.

Team A, lead by Ade, sped off to Colveston Primary School to finish off that 4 tonne soil lift. With biceps, triceps and engaged core muscles at the read, the team cracked on - running wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of soil 200m to the growing space.

Team B, lead by Ivo, set off in the direction of Victoria Park, where a resident required our help in tackling his "garden"... which was actually more like a miniature forest. It was really quite strange to walk in through the front door and out of the back door: One minute we were in the very urban surrounds of a residential London street; the next minute we found ourselves beneath towering plants which had entwined into a thick green canopy. So even though the sun overhead was pretty strong, being inside that garden felt dark and cool.

But after 45 minutes of intense sawing, shearing, secateuring and snapping, it had all begun to look rather different – and we began to feel the sun on our faces again. When the resident himself came out to take a look, he seemed both pleased and more than a little surprised. Walking to one edge of the garden which had been virtually unaccessible an hour before, he said "It's been a long time since I've been able to come this far." There's a bit more to do, so we're hoping to go back & finish things off soon – but for now, we seem to have a fairly happy customer. We even uncovered a potential spot for a barbecue.

The run there had been glorious: a lovely, quiet route that was often leafy and always sunny. For the run back, it was decided we'd try a more direct and hopefully quicker route – largely owing to the fact that we'd got so carried away on the job that we'd overshot our timings! But we made up the time as best we could with a very keen pace and a blistering sprint finish. An excellent end to an excellent evening.