Tonight's task was an annual favourite: distributing flyers to advertise the wonderful Noel Park Festival.

First to arrive at GGHHQ was run leader Sarah, after having run from home in the heat to get there on time. When no one else had arrived by 6:45, Sarah made her way alone to meet task owner Rich, who was clutching a handful of flyers and wearing a suspiciously clean-looking red t-shirt. Welcome back to the fold, Rich!

Sarah had shared a 📍, and she was surprised by the arrival of Clare who hadn't signed up but just happened to be passing by, and decided helping the community was far preferable to a five minute fitness test run. Dave was next up, and just when we thought everyone else was super late Asan appeared.

We split into two teams of two, one each side of the road, with Rich going to flyer a smaller side street. Soon it turned into a little competition between Sarah and Asan on one side, and Dave and Clare on the other. Dave and Clare managed a narrow victory.

On the next street over, Mark appeared. Rich rejoined the group and now it was three on three. Sarah attempted to get a cat to join, but cats are not team players.

Meanwhile Latoya was somewhere in Noel Park trying in vain to catch up with our merry band. Alas, we were too quick for her!

Soon enough we had completed all of the target streets and it was time to melt away into the evening (quite literally perhaps, it's still very hot out there).

7 Goodgymmers leapfrogged through the streets of Wood Green, leafleting for the incoming Noel Park Summer Festival.

Kudos corner

Big noise for Sheril who joined us for her first task and fitted in like a natural. Come again!

Don't Lose Any Fingers In The Flaps

Our Goodgymmers congregated nice and early in Russell Park to collect a mammoth pile of leaflets to be delivered in Wood Green.

Leading the charge was leafleting-anarchist Julie who straight away set off in regaling us stories of friends losing fingers through letter flaps while trying to get rid of leaflets every which way except actually delivering them.

Latoya, Sheril, and Mark very wisely decided to take the opposite side of the road, while Sarah and Paul had to endure the constant reminders of missing digits.

We bumped into some regulars along the way, and even engaged in a bit of community engagement, trying to drum up some business for the festival.

After around an hour, we had delivered well over 400 leaflets in this very warm evening. Probably even 450 if we count the ones Julie put through Paul's letterbox. (Jokes)

No fingers were harmed in the making of this report.

IT'S OUR BIRTHDAY NEXT WEEK - COME!

8 Goodgymmers made their way to Floyde's Garden in Wood Green to lend the Friends of Russell Park a hand in giving a very thirsty community garden a drink

Role Models

It's hot out there, y'all. I'm sure I don't need to tell you. And gardens all across London are feeling the heat. The Friends of Russell Park pressed the big red button labelled 'Help Needed, Dearest Goodgym' and it would have been churlish of us to ignore them.

When we turned up, we found out that we only had one hose for the job. Undettered, Dave and Gramps scoured the grounds for anything that could be useful and we managed to find some buckets and a massive empty bottle, and all our Goodgymers got on with the job.

Longtime readers of these reports (the two or three of you who are still humouring me after all these years) will have already noticed that this is the location where our wonderful Latoya always gets lost on the way to. We all held our breath tonight as 7pm came and went and Latoya was nowhere to be found. Some of us might have placed a bet on how late she would get there, if at all. Without giving away too much, she got there in the end and earned herself her task credit by quickly arranging an impromptu Badgym outing. <3

Along the way, we even managed to rope in some local kids to give us a hand with the watering and our Sarah offered herself up as the target in some very chaotic water target practice.

By 8pm, we where all on our Badgym way, having worked up a thirst ourselves.

Come next week as we celebrate six years of Gramps in charge by painting the town red (and blue, and green, and.....) 

It was back to nursery for 4 Goodgymmers as we ferried plants to a from at Russell Park.

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

A small hiccup with our task for the evening meant that our Goodgymmers had to detour to Russell Park to complete next week's task tonight instead.

LIke the pros that they are, our heroes were lending the Friends group a had as they were salvaging literal hundreds of plants for a certain death (being binned) by transferring to the safe haven of a new plant nursery (Floyde's Garden).

Armed with gloves, a wheelbarrow, and buttery underfoot reflexes, our Goodgymmers made light work of the dark task. Highlight of the chat was the moment when our Julie, returning from some glorious time away, regaled us with the story that she got so excited during her holiday telling someone about Goodgym Haringey that she... check notes... fell off a high rock! We were assured she was ok. But there you go, I suppose I need to add health risks tags to future run invites. Prolonged exposure to Goodgym Haringey may cause clumsiness.

Just before 8, we had successfully saved every single plant and we all headed home, in search of warmth and sustenance.

Join us next week when we'll be actually doing tonight's task instead!

4 Goodgymmers flocked to Noel Park for this year's RSPB's Birdwatch survey and helped enhance the habitat for our feathered friends along the way.

Chirp Chirp

David, Rosa, Euclides and Euclides' mini-Goodgymmers met at Turnpike Lane Station for a lovely walk to Russell Park in Wood Green where we met reps of the new Friends group for a bird-friendly task.

Rosa, the mini-Goodgymmers and halfway through the task E Snr took on the job of doing a couple of laps of the park, surveying and tallying up the number of all the birds they could see within an hour. Pigeons and tits were the most popular, while a real lack of any parakeet sightings was reported as a big regret.

While the birdwatching was happening, David, Euclides, and Laurie and Bex from the Friends group installed seven new bird houses, three new bird feeders, and replenished the already-existing all-you-can-eat avian buffets.

A flocking nice way of spending a Sunday morning

5 Goodgymmers proved they weren't afraid of the dark by lending a hand at a very spookily lit Floyde's Garden on a lovely, wet autumn night.

The turning of the worm

The good folk at Floyde's Garden are having some work done, creating a paving area to frame a whole bunch of new natural planting. However, the ground was chockablock with a multitude of very illegal and very aromatic three cornered leeks that needed to be dug up.

Our Goodgymmers brought their own lights as the proper pros they are and were on their knees even before slow ol' Gramps had a chance to do a proper risk assessment. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Conversation on the night included weighing the benefits of wild foraging against the use of fox urine as a cooking ingredient, the likelihood of finding Lord Lucan in one of the many holes we dug up, the futility of life expressed quite dramatically by the unnamed Goodgymmer who attempted to use a rusty paint stripper and a screwdriver in place of a trowel, and one of our regulars spent most of her evening engaged in very one-sided chat with every single worm we dug up. It takes all sorts.

Join Dave and Latoya at Traid next week for more fun and games!