Take a gamble on the bramble

When I woke up I knew I needed a GoodGym job tonight. After my morning dose of pushups, I scrolled through the listings and found a couple of missions on my way from work. None of the timings fitted me. Without any expectations, I fired a message to mission control to negotiate a 6 pm mission for me.

I put my camouflage on, shirt and trousers that never saw an iron, and walked to the station, saying goodbye to the morning sun. I stopped at the coffee shop where I never see a soul on Thursday mornings. The pretty barista with big, dark eyes stamped twice my loyalty card, as usual. After being served a flat white by an angel, I descended to the purgatory of cancelled trains. When I emerged from the underworld, almost an hour later, I got a message from Mission Control. Dave sorted everything out for me. He's the real angel.

What happened to me between that time and 5:30 pm was a blur of top-secret discussions at my top-secret workplace. Then I changed into red and found myself in the City, filled with the crowd spilling onto the streets from overflowing pubs. The happy hour wasn't an option for me. There was a job to do for Mr M who was linked to me thanks to Dave.

Mr M had a simple objective for me: to clear the whole area in front of his flat. I glanced at the overgrowth and gauged how much work was there. "Just brambles and grass? Or the tree too?" I asked. The tree was there to stay. Mr M handed me a pair of brand-new secateurs and an old-fashioned spade. "Old-fashioned like me", he said, "Did you do that kind of job?". "Many times", I replied, "The chopping is not the problem, the bagging can be".

Mr M left me with the task and I started chopping the brambles and packing them into bags he gave me right away. I stamped on many snails in the process. I guess they found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mr M came back and asked if I wanted some water. I said a glass would be perfect but he gave me a whole bottle of Perrier. We chatted about his past: many, sometimes unexpected, places he lived in, his building jobs and his wine trading business. When asked which city he liked the most as the place to stay, he said: "here". He has been living in the area for 47 years.

I finished chopping and pulling all the weeds Mr M wanted to get rid of. Just as I had assessed at the start, there wasn't much time left for digging the roots. I dug out some of them and left the rest for my successor. Mr M was happy with what I achieved. He hoped that I, or another GoodGymer, would come again and help remove the roots of the brambles.

I walked back South, only now discovering that The Shard and St Paul's were so close.