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…