We're getting used to rain on Bank Holidays. Last night, there were eight of us that didn't mind the risk of getting wet and ventured over to Barnsbury Community Centre to continue helping with the garden project.

We were greeted with a large ring of soil when we arrived and our job for the evening was to rid it of large rocks. There were plenty of these, but we also found:

• Slate
• Glass
• Bricks
• Electrical Wire
• A shell
• Steel bars
• Unidentified lumps of metal
• Plastic brackets
• Beer bottle

We worked for a good 25 minutes - while remembering how nice it used to be (and still is for some of us) to have long breaks from school/college/uni over the summer. At the end we had a created a respectable pile of rubble and the soil looked much fitter for use. We'd also managed to gather a large amount of soil on our hands and shoes. Some of our hands were so muddy we decided not to stop for a mid-task biscuit (pink wafers today) for fear of inadvertently ingesting mud and worms and who knows what else.

Following a brush off we carried out a 2-team 4-person continuous relay around the gardens. This was so much fun we decided to do another one with a few of everybody's favourite exercise (burpees - c'mon) chucked in.

It was getting dark now (bye bye summer) and time to head home. Feeling frisky we decided it was time to pick up the pace with a game of secret surges: everybody was assigned a secret number and had to try and escape the evil clutches (whatever) of the rest of the group when their number was called out. Although there were only eight of us there were nine numbers. Nobody knows what happened to number four. We may never know.

Back at the pool (on time. Can you believe it?) we had a stretch in the eery silence and discussed what the ideal number of working days per week might be (taking into consideration the economy, productivity etc. as well as personal preferences). There were a couple of 4.5 days (workaholics), and a couple of 3.5 days (lazy sods), but most settled for 4. Everybody sort of admitted that you could cram five days of office work into three though*

Next week we're at the wonderful Olden Garden right around the corner from the pool. See you there. And don't forget drinks this Thursday. No lycra allowed. Unless you're me.

Simon

*if anybody's boss is reading this, we're just kidding. LOL!!!11!