Tonight’s task was with another new task owner. We were helping St Anthony’s Church with a garden tidy up in time for an important visit at the weekend.

After our initial congregation with everyone getting the welcome speech and task brief…The A Team – lets call them The Saint’s set off on their run/walk led by Run Leader Sut Yee. Two of our team were actually conquering their longest distance with us tonight! So a huge congratulations to both Pam and Meera for going the extra mile tonight.

The rest of us.. let’s call us The Sprinters (loose term for me tonight after the weekend’s activities but let’s go with it)…we did our warm up and set off on the 3km run out. I did want to run a bit slower today to save our soles for the run back…No other reasons at all! Warm welcome to Katrina on her first run with us tonight and thank you to Darren for back-marking.

No ‘Garden’ Fast Rules

On arrival at the Church, our lovely task owner Eva, gave us our instructions on what needed doing. The grounds to the Church are stunning, so our job was to help remove all debris, leaves and weeds. We were leafing no stone unturned tonight.

Quickly and efficiently we set to work in small teams.

Sweep it and reap

A hive of activity was going on in the grounds. Weed split the areas between us and:-

• Antonio, Meera, Jenni, Jen, Pam, Jean and Katrina were on sweep duty …sweeping everything into a heap.
• Paul (I’ll come back to Paul in a minute…you won’t want to miss this, so please don’t stop reading just yet), Kam, Jen and Mabu took ownership of the small patio area and were weeding, sweeping, brushing and picking…
• Ricky, Darren and Sandy were on litter picking and leaf picking. They hard-leaf found any leaves in the area they were covering whereas in other areas they were practa-leaf everywhere.
• Sut had the best job though – she was a wheelbarrow of laughs as she learnt how to manoeuvre a barrow full of wet leaves.

With so many of us out tonight…we got the job done in time…pew!

This task was a piece of cake!

Nothing pleases a group of runners more than cake! So when Eva offered us a warm indoor space to chat and have a slice of cake…there was no way we were saying no..

Salvatorie’s wife had made the most delicious cake! And it was nice to be able to have a chat with Eva and Father Nicholas.

The Church grounds are just amazing as it was truly felt humbling to be able to help them tonight to make the outdoor space even nicer.

We certainly ‘rose’ to the occasion. We left the Church with a warm fuzzy feeling and a desire to want to come back soon to help again.

Are you Paul’ing my leg?

So let’s go back to Paul. What an absolute legend he is. Paul came over tonight from Bristol! Yes, you read that right…Bristol. What I didn’t realise was, until someone who had read Liv’s newsletter was that this wasn't just any Paul…it was ‘the Paul’ who had just hit 500 good deeds!

And what an absolute gent he was too. Thank you so much for coming to visit us tonight and hope you had a safe drive back.

Sleigh my name, Sleigh my name

It nearly that time of the year..

We only have 3 more group runs left of 2019 so let’s make them count…Santa hats at the ready… Next week we are at Parvaaz, helping with their outdoor space. On the 9th, we will be back at Home Slough helping to put up the Christmas decorations and our final run on the 16th will be a leaflet drop for various community groups (and maybe a cheeky drink afterwards).

Ps... notice that I got me some new GG branded gloves... one of a kind... not available anywhere else in the world as Our Jean knitted them for me ❤