Lucinda was in the North. Northern Emma had gone West. Others were watching Fulham or were off work sick. But Chris travelled over, despite a very early morning next day, and another six of us set to work collecting every last bit of litter from the Cranbrook gardens, front and back, as well as a huge number of leaves which had accumulated rather earlier than usual this year

Emma mounted the mound, Jo lifted litter, Adam pulled plastic out of trees, while Kareem filled bags with all kinds of debris. And as for Kitty – what can we say about the ever-cheerful Kitty who sauntered up to GoodGym one day on the Isle of Dogs and has never looked back – congratulations to her on her golden anniversary: 50 good deeds, just in time before she departs London for the shire counties – temporarily we hope…

The original idea was to help set up the family party for our friends at the canal club, not least so Tower Hamlets had a Saturday morning task that week

As it happened, we were involved in another task https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/setting-up-a-stall-for-the-cemetery-park-summer-fair-c49d2f87-92f2-412b-8628-5a61e8b8a8dc that morning, and coincidently, Sally from the canal club phoned on Wednesday to suggest we instead served coffee in the afternoon. Synchonisity!

So five of us turned up in dribs and drabs, to find the task had changed yet again – we were now looking after the barbeque! And it turned out that special guest Sooz from Hackney was a dab hand at turning chicken, halal skewers and sweetcorn, until they were just nicely cooked through the inside

Other useful attendees were Sam, despite a late night at the Queen’s Head in St Pancras, Ilana, who’d just knocked nearly a minute off her previous ParkRun PB (despite a lack of photographic evidence), and Adam and Emma, who stayed well beyond the call of duty in order to tend the barbeque and keep everything safe and sound.

Another enjoyable social gardening club with St Margaret's House. In this visit it was time to harvest the lavender and sort the leaf mulch cages ahead of the mulberry tree leaves dropping.

There was a bumper amount of lavender and with the sun shining out the front, it made for a fine spot to volunteer. Sam had to dash off early to see Odyssey (again) and Emma stayed on, getting into a crafty swing of weaving the lavender into decorative baskets.

Next month's social gardening club is on Wednesday 23rd September between 4-7pm.

Stress is prominent in our society, and now it’s affected the trees! The parched summer we’re suffering is no fun for our barked friends either, who are shedding their leaves before the schools have gone back. They know a thing or two about survival – one of the plane trees on the site is 280 years old – but the leaves are piling up and blocking the paths of St Matthew’s churchyard

So a squad of Goodgymers – some arriving earlier than others – converged on the premises to help Lady Andrea address the situation. A special welcome to new recruit Arina, who’s just joined her boyfriend in London, and was soon converted to GoodGym, after Mile End ParkRun on Saturday

We picked up, swept, gathered and bagged, all while catching up with news of padel and tennis, job hunts, shakshuka, pubs, poetry and property

Within an hour, we’d filled more large bags than I could count (but it was more than twenty-five). Just pity the man from Veolia who comes to empty the medium-sized rubbish bin and is confronted with our leaf-bag mountain. At least he’ll have a nice tidy church garden to look at…

So I had loads of GoodGym leaflets, inherited from our former guru Laura, that were burning a hole in my pocket. Ot at least, filling a drawer in my desk. A better place for these was surely on local people’s doormat, to let more people know of the joys of GoodGym. We also had something to do after ParkRun and coffee

We were in good spirits having already recruited a new person at that very ParkRun and coffee session. And Sam took the opportunity to promote his https://legstumsruns.com/ fitness sessions with leaflets of his own

I’d spotted a number of streets behind Stepney Green station with individual front doors all along – none of those hard-to-penetrate tower blocks. The letter boxes, however were varied – some had brushes inside which made it an effort to force leaflets through; while others had a pleasing swing to them, making delivery far easier

By the time we’d finished, we’d covered about eight streets and a square, making sure everyone in the area was aware of GoodGym. Meanwhile, we couldn’t help but be aware of a local dog-walking organisation, who’s leafletters had been there ahead of us but seemingly couldn’t be bothered actually pushing the adverts through the letterboxes

There was to be no mulching at Columbia Road this time, the mulch heap having been removed by the council after a fire, an indication of the drought conditions endured by Londoners at present. So there's a hosepipe ban, but plants still need irrigation, which is where GoodGym come in...

A very healthy turnout of 19 GoodGymers soon grabbed a surprisingly adequate number of watering cans. They boosted their daily step-count while strengthening their muscles, returning again and again from the water tap in the storage area, to the bushes and plants on the other side of the estate. Doing good while keeping fit!

Ed and several of our crew seemed to have abandoned the task, but never fear, we found them using an alternative tap, unhelpfully situated behind a fence, but more handily situated for the bushes and trees on that side of the estate

Special mention to Lucinda and Chris who were prepared to stay in the confines of the storage area in order to serve a constant stream of GoodGym “customers”. Actually, they probably had the right idea, it was a bit cooler in there…