Canal exploring walks, Margate tourism, working on Steve Coogan's new show, heading to Wales, taking in Rye, egg art and puns, watching a mental bike race in France and lastly going three days on the bounce to the pub. All of these activities have one thing in common, a long weekend. We need a four day working week people!

Smooth tarmac miles on the Greenway, with the ritual "is it this intersection?" chat, it's the fourth, someone please remember that! Mbemba welcomed us, showed us the tools and gave us the normal relaxed instructions, "trim here and weed there" he clearly has a lot of confidence in our gardening know-how. I don't think we let him down. Many bushes and trees were trimmed back to a more sightly and practical size. Weeds were weeded. At the end there was ten bin bags of green waste - decent for thirty mins work.

No session was done on the way home, I had planned one, then realised I wouldn't be able to keep up, felt very weak on that run. T'was all good, we had a nice chat as we trotted into a rather majestic sunrise.

Next week we head to Get Out Sign up here

Decent little clan of us yesterday on another balmy October evening. A sizeable run ahead of us, we did some looseners then went into the RWQ "What was the highlight of your weekend?" As always a superb range of different activities: Autumnal walks in Epping Forest, smashing pumpkins, performing at a long waited gig, a fiftieth b'day party shenanigans, brick pointing at Cody Dock, a delicious chicken pie, time with the wife, a satisfying bike ride and East is East at the National Theatre. Reckon I'll recycle that question, easier to answer than some of our other questions, handy to have up the sleeve.

Once at Newham Hospital we got to chopping, weeding, pruning, sweeping and bagging. There was some light directions given, but the gist was understood - give the gaff a haircut - and that's what we did. I counted eight bags in the zone I was in, I know the other guys did a thorough and transformative job in their patch. Think the gardens had been neglected since the pandemic, hence the overgrowth. I bet they'll be very appreciative of our efforts, hopefully it will be used even more now as a result.

It being Social Night (last Wednesday of the month) - we nestled into the PrintHouse, getting some pizza calories in, plus well-earned isotonic drinks. Was a great night and good to bed the routine firmly back into the diary.

Need to organise the next few weeks, had a couple of hopeful tasks, that haven't materialised, but will list a bunch of sessions tomorrow, apologies.

Right that's all from me, check the parkrun chat on the whatsapp group, there's a team going,...and have a great weekend.

Until next week,

B

Congratulations to Rosa on reaching her 100th good deed down at the Covid-19 vaccination centre in the ExCel! She was joined by me and Graham from Newham and possibly some other GoodGymmers (hard to tell with all the masks) along with about 30 other Barts NHS volunteers. Numbers of people coming to get their jabs have been picking up recently, with about 1600 given on Saturday. We had a range of tasks between us from welcoming and directing people arriving into the car park, showing them which queue to join, then managing people going in and out of the pods where they're given the vaccine. Unfortunately we didn't manage to get a (socially disctanced) team picture as Rosa was sent home early for reasons that are not completely clear to me (I'll assume it wasn't because she was being disruptive or anything like that) so we'll have to make do with the one we have of Graham rocking the Barts tabard.

Look forward to going back for another shift and hopefully seeing some more GoodGymmers there soon.

Thick smoky clouds engulfed the majority of a dusk sky last night, not sufficient to scare off our red warriors.

Siobhan's 100th and Clara's 2nd GG run yesterday. We did an extra efficient intro chat, inc a pre-asked RWQ: "what phrase irks you most?" A great cathartic exercise, I thoroughly enjoyed watching us all vent. We had phrases and words from 'reaching out', 'taking it back to base camp', 'cascade it down', 'living your best life', 'genre', 'a game of two halves', the incessant use of 'like', 'no offence, but', the default use of male of pronouns and many more.

Longest run on the GGN books at the mo, 9k in total, though seemingly not a big deal for most of you. Remember a year or so back, we had a similar distance run, and was a big effort getting back. Shows how much fitter this group has got collectively, mindset change too.

Once we arrived at the hospital, weeds were yoinked out, flowers and bulbs were planted, bushes were trimmed and tidied. The Dementia garden looked miles better 25mins after you'll left. Nice one guys.

Next week we are at Manorfield School, sign up here

Before I log off, two things. Huge credit to our Siobhan, who climbed into three figures yesterday. Our intrepid traveller who's been absolutely superb in pumping out social media posts, evidencing your efforts. Good luck with your masters and see you in December mate.

Second, we've got another birthday next week, GGN turn 5, dinner and drinks after our session. Looks set to be a corking 5 year anniversary.

Have a quality weekend and catch you soon

Fantastic evening in East London last night, we got our numbers back up to 20, did a highly rewarding new task, had 4 new runners to Newham, and one GoodGym debutant, Lilly. An abundance of positives there, definitely changing the trajectory of my evening. I crashed my bike en route yesterday, as a young boy sprinted into the road from nowhere, was going nearly c 20mph, but managed to break and minimise the collision, although we certainly collided. He was okay, I've been better. Anyway long story short -that's why I was limping along like a pirate yesterday. But that was almost all forgotten after our run - chat - volunteer - chat - run - chat, aka wednesday eve's, guaranteed to make you feel better after.

We asked for "positive stories of the NHS?" as our random weekly question, and we had a plethora or goodies. Helping nans, nurses buying you snickers, staff being awesome when your appendix was removed, grateful for husbands and girlfriends who work there, personal positive experienced from employment and loads more. What a great institution it is, let's never forget that.

A fluid 2.5 miles later and we reached the hospital, with Ruth there to guide us through staff only entrances, and straight into some gardening. Helping the dementia patients by creating a nicer sensory garden. Used by the staff too, and patient's friends and family. Impossible to quantify the difference these green spaces make to people's lives, but there's unquestionably a huge benefit.

You guys weeded, pruned, dug, shovelled, planted, watered, nourished and tidied. Coming in at just over 30mins, our work was done, only the pesky return to do, down the Green way at dusk to wrap it up. I believe there was even a crew after for the last weds of the month social, you wild cats you.

Next week we're at the School, a tried and tested task, Sign up here routine is good, but so is new stuff, we're working on that perfect ratio.

Have a great weekend one and all

Till next week

B