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.

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