This week’s GoodGym Barnet group run was a little different as we started at The Bull Theatre in High Barnet, where we’d previously helped out with some painting.

The Bull is another of Barnet’s little community jewels. The building has a history stretching back centuries and became the Old Bull Arts Centre in 1975. Today it is home to the Susi Earnshaw Theatre School as well as being used by the wider community. The school has helped develop an impressive list of young performers, including Amy Winehouse, Jess Glynne, Daniel Roche from Outnumbered and West End performers Alexia Khadime and Aimie Atkinson. Amy Winehouse and Alexandra Burke are also among those who have performed at the Bull itself. High Barnet Fair was once one of the biggest livestock fairs in England, attracting huge crowds, with horse racing, boxing, drinking and entertainment. The fair became so famous in London that “Barnet Fair” became Cockney rhyming slang for hair .. hence your Barnet.

Then it was time for some GoodGym action. We set about pulling weeds and clearing the outside area, and with plenty of hands we got through the job in quick time ... leaving enough daylight ( but not much ) for a run.

We headed across the High Street and through Old Court House Recreation Ground, enjoying one of those useful traffic-free routes that makes you realise how much there is to discover locally. The park itself was once pasture with stables and a brewery before becoming public open space in the 1920s. From there the route continues down a leafy alley beside the tennis courts, across Mays Lane and eventually through the fields to Dollis Brook.

We caught a lovely glowing sky from the last of the sunset before heading back uphill to the Bull, finishing with a warm-down and stretch inside the theatre.

A good task, a bit of running, some local history and another important community venue supported. We look forward to helping the Bull again later in the year.

Three Goodgymers attended the Windermere Avenue Play street in Finchley to help locals manage this monthly summer event. For a few hours on a Sunday the street is closed to cars, allowing the local children and adults to roam freely and socialise on the street. Goodgym helped the organisers to staff the barriers at the end of the street, to ask motorists to go the long way round, or to let those through who live on the street. The unseasonably good weather continues, so it was a gloriously sunny day for everyone to enjoy the freedom of the street.

The Phoenix Cinema had asked GoodGym Barnet to distribute leaflets for this film in an effort to support a community action screening and Q&A session. We decided to see the film ourselves.

I’ll admit I was initially a little cynical about Super Nature, but having seen it at the weekend,. I think I now understand much better what director Ed Sayers was trying to do.

The whole film is shot on Super 8, the old home-movie format many of us associate with the 1970s and 80s. A cartridge gives you only around two or three minutes of film and there is no recorded sound, so unlike a phone or digital camera you simply can’t keep filming everything. Sayers brought together more than 40 contributors across 25 countries to capture the natural world in this deliberately restricted way.

And perhaps the restriction is the point.

When you only have a tiny amount of film, you have to choose your moment. You spend more time actually looking, waiting and being present in the environment. It reminded me of taking photographs with film: every picture cost something, so you thought about it rather than firing off dozens of shots.

There is also something nostalgic about the grainy Super 8 image. Even the director said at the Q&A that this seems to affect younger people who never actually grew up with the format. It somehow makes what you are watching feel like a memory — and that becomes rather powerful when the subject is a natural world we are in danger of losing.

The film does show some very direct environmental threats: plastic in the oceans, threatened ecosystems and the last northern white rhinos. But I came away thinking there was another, less obvious message as well.

We live in a world where we constantly consume information — photographs, videos, messages, news and data. We record more and more but perhaps sometimes experience less. That endless appetite for more is not completely separate from the wider consumerism which is literally consuming the natural world.

I would have liked more time at the Q&A to explore the community side of this. Perhaps part of reconnecting with nature isn’t travelling across the world to see something spectacular. It is stopping, looking and becoming involved with what is around us — our parks, woods, gardens, birds, insects and local wildlife.

That links very nicely with GoodGym. We can actually do something: look after a local nature reserve, plant and care for trees, clear litter, support community organisations and simply become more aware of the natural world on our doorstep.

Maybe the lesson of Super Nature is quite simple: consume a little less, look a little longer — and get involved.

Super Nature film.. Super nature Reserve and super goodGym runners doing some good!

We gathered in the foyer of the Phoenix Cinema and welcomed two new GoodGym recruits—big shout-out to Edward and Neeral on their first session!

The Phoenix also gave us an emergency bundle of leaflets to distribute for Super Nature, a film celebrating the natural world, showing at 2pm on Saturday 5 September, followed by a Q&A with director Ed Sayers. The Phoenix is an important charitable community cinema, so please support it if you can. Find out more and book here⁠ https://www.phoenixcinema.co.uk/PhoenixCinemaLondon.dll/WhatsOn?f=634449

After warming up outside, we numbered up by sharing the television programmes that influenced us as children—from Teletubbies and Bagpuss to Star Trek.

We split into two teams and delivered all the leaflets along a nearby road before setting off at a good pace for the two-kilometre run to Glebelands Local Nature Reserve.

Glebelands is one of the last surviving parts of old Finchley Common and is a Grade I Site of Borough Importance for Nature Conservation. Its clay soil holds water, feeding natural springs, streams and seasonal ponds. These support rare wetland plants and wildlife, including great crested newts. It may look like a small patch of rough woodland, but it is one of Finchley’s most precious natural spaces.

Although the ground looked dry, subsurface water and mud meant that we couldn’t do the planned clearance work. Instead, we split into pairs for a litter pick and found a surprising amount of rubbish, particularly around a concrete structure that seemed to act as a litter magnet!

With our bags full, we headed back—an enjoyable evening supporting both our local cinema and an important local nature reserve.

Picking Up Good Habits

GoodGym members headed out across the country for some anytime litter picking.

Jacqui and Sally cleaned up around central London before rewarding themselves with a couple of free exhibitions at Somerset House. Paul tackled the River Quaggy in Sutcliffe Park, collecting four bags filled mainly with cans and fast-food packaging.

Meanwhile, Gus and I explored a lovely disused railway line, searching high and low for rubbish hidden behind walls and deep in the bushes. Why people go to such trouble to hide their litter never ceases to amaze me—fortunately, Gus proved a very willing assistant! Thanks to Peter for also providing photos.

A walk, run or litter pick is a simple way to get active and improve your neighbourhood. Why not join us and give it a go this September?

GoodGym litter picking any time any place during the month of September. Sign up to commit to improve your Local area. If you need a litter picker and bags, let me know.

https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/anytime-single-or-paired-plogging-litter-picking-walking-or-running-b5da6090-e9e9-47cd-ae3e-fada5aefa603?legacy=true