An unusually cloudy and breezy (and dusty) London Fields greeted Run Director Rue, Marshall (and nearly tail walker) Sooz and timekeeper Nick this morning - after the past few weeks of bright sunshine and warm temperatures it was something of a welcome change. We were also delighted to be joined by John, who eagerly donned the hi viz and stood ready for instruction on where Rue wanted him deployed - the marshall post by the playground became his chosen spot for today.

As we now seem to be very much into summer holiday season, we stood under the big tree at 0845 somewhat in anticipation of how many enthusiastic runners we'd get, but they soon started appearing from all directions, including two absolute first timers, and in the end 22 stood poised on the windy start line awaiting the off...and then they were gone, and soon spread out in a long line around the edge of the fields - our intrepid Tail Walker Johnny (who to be fair had a small person on his shoulders) struggled to keep up with the pace!

After just over 8 minutes our lead runner headed down the finishing straight followed by a neatly spaced sequence of out of breath runners, of whom 6 set new PBs, which was going some in today's wind. At the end we sadly bid farewell to Johnny one of our long time RDs today as he heads to deepest Kent to take on a new job, and who, along with his wife and two children, have been huge supporters of London Fields junior parkrun for such a long time - they will all be missed, especially when it comes to token sorting at the end of each event...

There was a noticeable police presence all along Tottenham Court Road this afternoon, accompanied by sirens and a lot of hi viz - seems they were targeting the souped up electric bikes, and judging by the number already chained to a flat bed truck, were having some success.

Souped up was also Mr T's top request as he'd missed a shop last week and so had "broken into" his emergency supplies - in this case tins of vegetable or chicken soup from M&S. Once found, it was a slow amble back via Holland&Barrett, Tesco and eventually Lidl to complete his list - sadly there was no washed Spinach to be found on the shelves today, so Mr T will be back to giving the leaves a double rinse in the sink before consuming for his tea.

A double helping of goat's milk related products on today's list for Miss N - both she and I had no idea you could even get semi-skimmed goat's milk, but you can in Tesco. The specific soft goat's cheese in Aldi required a bit more hunting around on the shelves, but eventually was found slightly hidden behind a myriad of other cheeses - the world's moved on a lot from when variations on cheddar were seen as luxury items...

Along with the usual regulars on today's list for Mrs S, she threw in a couple of curveballs - the first was pumpernickel (for which I was confident that if anywhere was going to have it in stock, Waitrose would be top of my list), and the other was paper napkins (or was that serviettes...), which prompted a discussion between Mrs S and I as to whether there was a difference between the two...

Sadly pumpernickel was nowhere to be found in the aisles of the world's politest supermarket, and neither were serviettes - fortunately my route home took me past IKEA who I knew wouldn't let me down on the serviette/napkin front - the search for the rye bread continues for another week.