I was making my way to the address for the social mission, and as I turned into the road I saw a very small toddler running in the road towards my car. I slammed on the breaks, pulled the car up onto the pavement and got out to try and coax her off the road, assuming that her parent would be following behind. She must have only been about 18 months old, and had only one shoe on as she looked up at me. I asked her where he mummy was and she ran at me with open arms and I lifted her off the road.

There was no sign of any other adults in the road or on the pavement so I started walking purposely to see if I could see anyone further along. No one! I then started door knocking to see. If anyone knew who she was but got very few answers and no one seemed interested. So at that point I knew I had to phone the police. I gave a quick call to Martin to explain that I would be late to the task, but this mission seemed a higher priority.

The little girl spotted a toy on a front lawn and wriggled out of my arms to play with it. Some children in an upper story flat leaned out and shouted at us to leave their toys alone, and I was soon calling to their mum to explain the situation. She invited us in and her children kept the little girl occupied with toys while I had a lengthy call to 999, asking me the child’s name and if she could tell me the names of her parents and address. I had to explain a few times that she was about 18 months old so not really up for a conversation about her details.

Eventually a patrol car arrived with blue lights on, much to the excitement of her children, and I then had another long conversation about who I was, why I was in the area, and what I knew about the child. Trying to explain that I was supposed to be doing a good deed for an older person who’s name I didn’t know, seemed a little confusing. While the police officer was making arrangements to have another patrol car with a child seat come, and to complete the necessary info to take the child to the police station we spotted a man walking quickly down the street look rather anxious. I called out of the window and asked him to stop – asking what he was looking for. Thankfully it was Dad and soon the police officer was checking out his details and that of the child he was looking for and established that he was her dad. I was then asked to bring her downstairs, by which time Mum had arrived and I was able to reunite them, tearfully and with lots of hugs and thanks.

So I arrived at the GoodGym task rather later than I had anticipated. Martin had been there for over half an hour and made an excellent start on the weeding. He explained the task and joined in our second stint of weeding that day. There wasn’t too much to do, and working systematically we managed to pull all the weeds out from between the gravel, uproot some very stubborn dandelions, and clear a whole lot of weeds, ivy and sticky weed from behind the shed.

Mrs C was invited to inspect our work and she seemed delighted with the difference we had made. In all the excitement of the missing child, I had completely forgotten that this was Martin’s 300th GoodGym task! He is an absolute legend and has given so much of his time to the various GoodGym projects and tasks. He really deserved a whole lot more congratulations than I was able to give him.

CONGRATULATIONS MARTIN