Tuesday 23rd July 2019
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Report written by John Hunter (he/him)
30 hot little runners headed 5.4km in the evening sun to rendezvous with a helicopter and a man called Adrian at Agnes Riley community gardens for a variety of gardening tasks.
John was in for Mark this week, and the evening started with some cheers for Paul for surpassing 50 good deeds and to Sarah, Charlotte and Bethan for coming on their first run! CHEERS FOR ALL PLZ! 🙌🙌🙌
Then, despite a few protestations of:
Doesn't GoodGym cancel a run when it's this hot? I've got a bead on!
(hint: no) we split into two groups: a 'quite slow please, I am hot enough already' group led by Lucy, and a 'maybe if we go slightly faster, the breeze will cool us down??' group led by John - and headed UP THE HILL (fml) to Agnes Riley Gardens. Update: breeze tactic only semi-successful.
And what did we find there? Well, for one, a BRIGHT RED HELICOPTER. The power, the majesty, the heroism of the London Air Ambulance crew - all of these were appreciated, but only slightly, compared to shouts of:
OOH THAT'S QUITE A NICE BREEZE ACTUALLY
Turns out that the 1,400hp of the MD902 Explorer Twin Engine Helicopters is much more effective than a Poundland handheld personal fan at wafting cooling currents over 29 sweaty gardeners, and it was tools down for a minute to enjoy the spectacle, majesty, and slight breeze of the chopper's takeoff. 💨💨💨
And also, and more importantly, we found Adrian of the community gardens, who wasted no time in organising 29 eager pairs of hands into crack teams dealing with hoeing, weeding, chopping back hedges (CHOPPING, CHOPPERS, GET IT??), dead-heading and watering. In the warm orange evening light, things were looking pretty tasty as we left, if we may say so ourselves. Adrian was pleased.
Thanks guys! - Adrian
Then it was back down the hill (that's better) with Nicky leading one group this time, and a return to Papa's to enjoy that moment when you stop running in the heat and realise JUST HOW SWEATY YOU ARE. Where's that breezy chopper when you need it?
The park is located next to a number of large social housing estates. Clapham Park Estate, just over the road, is being redeveloped and large numbers of people will be moving into the area. There are three primary schools in the immediate area, plus a new secondary school soon to be developed. We already have some very committed volunteers giving their time to gardening in the park and they have told us they would like some support to run weekly gardening sessions which can help people grow some of their own food. We also want to help children better understand where their food comes from.
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