Plenty of us came out today from across the holy trinity of NW London GoodGym boroughs, Barnet, Brent and Camden, with John along from Westminster on his first GG Community Mission (welcome John, thanks for coming! 👏) our usual task owners Anne and Betty, and even Herts Baseball Club was represented. Apparently they’re based in Hemel Hempstead, but train at nearby Basing Hill Park.

It was nice and bright and warm out, but luckily no comparison to yesterday’s heat wave so we were perfectly able to keep at it, without losing consciousness. After July’s GG visit where we got 20 bags of litter, plus the 36 which Betty collected ALONE during lockdown, the majority of the work that was left to us this time was of the more green-fingered variety. This included clearing weeds and grass from the paving, cutting back trees and bushes that had grown over the paths, and annihilating every buddleia in sight.

Alongside the good range of tools there every time, they’d managed to borrow some wheelbarrows from the builder’s yard next door today, which meant the vast amounts of plant waste both old and new could be efficiently gotten out to the road for the council to collect.

Thanks a lot for coming team and for anyone looking for something similar nearby soon, on Monday GG Brent will be back at Watling Gardens to help them with their err…. gardens. Sign-up here… for that 👍

Four of us met-up this morning in Cricklewood to kick-off the third Barnet back-to-back Community Mission Saturday of 2019.

Our task-owners Anne and Betty were there as ever, and despite grim weather being forecast, it was glorious out. Our numbers were dented somewhat by the GoodGym weekend away in Sofia, but the ‘G’s of ‘grit’ and ‘gusto’ were with us in the shape of Sam on the tourist trail from Ealing GG, who was there first, and already stuck right in proving the deeds don't stop cos some overseas banter is being had.

Spread a bit more thinly than usual we each adopted a different role and got on with it…

That’s the sound of the beast

After some litter picking amongst the bushes, Sam went out to the front of the park, and accompanied by the sounds of the traffic and of police horse’s hooves, devastated the weeds amongst the paving and along the wall; making the place look significantly more presentable. It’s also good that people passing see that something is being done about the place, such that they may wish to come along and contribute themselves next time.

Gym and Juice

Barnet co-trainer Damian was able to mine a deep and heretofore unknown seam of expertise today, in that of petrol lawnmowers. Like the Lawnmower Man and the Lawnmower Boy before him, this son of the Garden of England knew how to pull on the string bit to make them go alive, where the juice goes in the mouth bit, and not to give them too much juice otherwise they drown or something. Amazing!

'D’ for 'damager’

Amongst the portfolio of mowers they have there, he was able to get one moving, and used it to carve a huge ‘D’ into the grass,

'GGs up - Hoes down

Around one of the benches the grasses and weeds had really taken hold, so I pulled and hoed to try and make a dent in it, so that it’ll be more straightforward to get the dog-ends and bottle caps up in the future.

1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 - all it is to me is a mystery

As for Rupesh, he disappeared off into the park to I-don’t-know-where, and I was so busy with my hoe I’ve no sense of what he was up to – I guess it will remain forever a mystery...

This morning 11 legendary GoodGymmers came up to Cricklewood to hoover up some Deeds, and get tons done with several local community organisations.

First-off was Millennium Green, a space that was regenerated into a park around the year 2000. The site has some history involving the railway and with WWII. In its current guise as a park, people from the local community go along on the first Saturday of each month and help keep the place spick and span. Today GoodGym came along to give them a hand (or 22 hands in fact).

Today was Abi’s 100th Deed (go and give her a cheer) – in the same task location she’d not long since gotten her 50th Deed (just 65 days ago in fact, wtf?) So celebrating a big milestone again, plogging at Millenium Green again, and with a cake provided by Liz again, it may well have felt like Groundhog Day. Hence the pun title cleverly conceived by Liz (thanks Liz!) A super-special welcome to Valentina whose second Deed and first Community Mission it was today after she met some of our other GoodGymmers at Clitterhouse Farm recently.

As for the park, our task owners Anne and Gemma said today was the worst they’d ever seen the place, but with that many hands and grabbers and that much gusto, our team made light work of it (in the face of pretty chilly, glum weather too).

'Shell' of a good time

After taking care of all the tinnies and bottles in such short order, hands were left idling momentarily, so Katie's attention turned to the pistachio shells that littered the ground by a bench. On hands and knees she diligently picked them all up, whilst the rest of us stood around and did not a lot, nice work Katie!

“Locusts”

With the litter done, we fetched some weapons from the shed, and set-about assaulting some of the shrubs. There are paths that lead through the park so it was handy to keep them free of rogue thorny branches.
Our task owner said our team were ‘like locusts,’ but I’m sure it was meant affectionately.

All done with the task, the ‘locusts’ turned their attention to the spread Liz had kindly and generously provided us, including a GG 100 cake for Abi.

Her appetite for Deeds satiated (and possibly ‘shell-shocked’ by pistachio nuts) Katie left us, and the rest of us strolled up the street to Clitterhouse Farm, lead by Valentina’s dear wee one on her scooter.

See here for part II of today’s double…

Multiple Missions and multiple milestones

Our morning of good deeds could have started on a wobble today, with snow overnight and then Gladstone Parkrun trying to unsettle us further by cancelling ☃️.
However, thanks to some quick thinking by our stellar task owner, a potential disappointment was transformed into a DOUBLE Community Mission, and consequently TWO major GoodGym milestones for some of our volunteers!

With the Gladstone Parkrun cancellation, those of us who were there early for that hid from the weather in ‘Spoons and Costa until it was time for our Community Mission at Millennium Green to kick-off… Once we’d all convened there variously from Finchley, Camden, Brixton and Essex; we met some of the local community volunteers and got to work with our grabbers!

There was the usual stuff urban parks have to offer in the form of countless containers for delicious booze; plus between us we also found a pair of shoes, a tea saucer, a bundle of flyers and some men’s boxers.

Knowing the snow would mean our scope of tasks would be mostly limited to grabbing-up Lambrini bottles, our task owner Anne had arranged that we could go along to another GG Community Mission location at nearby Clitterhouse Farm and give them some help when we’d finished at Millennium Green.

As we left to pop along to the farm up the street, a guy turned-up braving the weather to take his dog and small children for a walk, so it was great GG and the people from the local community had just been by to make it a bit more safe and pleasant for small hands and paws. 👍

Nifty fifty

This was Abi’s 50th GoodGym deed, so now’s your chance to go and give her a cheer!

More of that to come in the next report, see you over there…

Today was the first time GoodGym had been to help out at Millennium Green, but they have a good number of volunteers from the community who are down there on the regular. They were extremely well-equipped and organised with all the things needed to give the place the spit and polish it deserves.

Some people were pruning shrubs, and some weeding the paving, but Rupesh and I went straight for the grabbers and got busy litter-picking. Whilst the patrons who used the park mostly seemed to be putting their tinnies and beer bottles in the bins, there were countless bottle tops and dog ends to get up by all the seating areas, plus party balloons and plastic confetti all about - evidently a popular place for a celebration. People also seem to used the park to relax, as there were Diazepam blister packs about, and plenty of the tiny ziplocs that herbal ‘medicine’ is sold in.

The task owners are there often, so hopefully next time they’ll have a hand from GoodGym again. Apparently there are WWII bunkers on the site that are accessible, so an opportunity to have a nose about down there perhaps…