*Doesn’t

Three of us met today just off the Holloway Road to tackle the garden from Mrs. E.

Graham had been pacing for the GoodGym takeover at Mile End ParkRun, and Damian was amongst five Barnet GoodGymmers who’d ventured south for Hampstead Heath ParkRun. Nice work!!

As we passed through the house towards the back garden, our host warned us that what we were to face had grown above head height. We’re all above 6’ tall, but she still wasn’t far off the mark… it was a kind-of savanna of tall grass with the occasional flowering bramble.

For putting the weeds in, she offered us a choice between a roll of black bags, and a roll of green bags. When I asked which she preferred we use, she ribbed me for being so ready to discriminate against black... bit of racial bants to kick things off. Eek!

There was the usual array of tools, plus something our host described as a ‘cutlass.’ Sure enough it was like a small sword and we three grown adults all giggled like kids at the prospect of getting to play with it. In the end, the cutting edge was about as sharp as a satsuma, but we each had a go swinging it round like Long John Silver before moving on to the more effective tools.

Between a rake and a couple of pairs of shears, we managed to chop, flatten or otherwise damage about two thirds of the garden before we called time and bagged it all up (using both black and green bags.) Hopefully we or some other GoodGymmers will be back soon to finish the job off...

Credit to Damian for one of his trademark pop music-inspired run report titles, and to Graham for the idea to use an asterisk to clarify the correct grammar – the management do not endorse the use of dodgy grammar in run report titles.