parkrun (the junior version or otherwise) is most certainly not a race, but occasionally you do have to doff your cap to one of our Sunday morning runners who clearly had more than one weetabix for breakfast this morning. Our first finisher, on a first time visit from his usual course at Leyton, crossed the line in an awe inspiring 6:56, more than a minute clear of his closest "pursuer" - chapeau m'sieur, as they say in bike racing. The maths is easy to work out his per km splits!!

Thanks as ever to our very helpful GoodGym volunteers who arrived at the big tree this morning and made sure everything ran smoothly - Hilary, John and Harvey were deployed as Course Marshals at key spots around the course, whilst Sooz and Nick kept it all largely under control at the start/finish line by barcode scanning, marshalling, encouraging and run directing, and all of our 40 finishers, including 1 absolute first timer, and 2 who received their half-marathon wristbands for each having completed 11 runs, crossed the line smiling (if a little red faced and out of breath), although a few needed to be guided towards the finish funnel...

More of the same under the big tree next week (super speedy times not guaranteed...) - join us if you can!

So today was day one of discovering the demise of the trusty barcode, to be replaced by QR codes, (which I'm sure provide the retailers with even more information about what happens to their products once they arrive on the shelves), as the packet of pork sausages that Mr T had asked for even confused the checkout person at Tesco who couldn't work out how to scan it on his machine...eventually just pointing his scanner at every part of the packet got the desired result.

Mr T's (cross)word of the week was "abettee" - even I was stumped on this one having never heard it before or seen it used, albeit we both worked out its meaning - has AI taken over setting crosswords now??

With the Waitrose at the Brunswick Centre currently closed for refurbishment until 24th June, Mrs S had to come up with Plan B for her shopping this morning - fortunately she'd given this some thought and pointed me in the direction of John Lewis on Oxford Street, where conveniently there is a Waitrose Food Hall in its basement, and more importantly it opens at 9am!

So with dictated list in hand, I set off in a new direction this morning along Oxford Street to find treasure amongst new aisles - as I was partway through gathering, the phone rang and Mrs S asked if I'd mind also getting two pieces of Salmon for her as well - kindly lady at the fish counter was only too happy to oblige, and I was soon back (quicker than going to Brunswick!) emptying the bags onto Mrs S' kitchen table.