Wednesday 16th September 2015
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So, it was wet last night. Everybody in London was wet. There were tweets about being wet, and it was on the news. Cory, regular GoodGym trainer wasn't wet cos he was in Portugal, laughing with glee at us lot.
Despite torrents of water falling from the sky, three of us had decided that there was still good to be done and skin's waterproof so why not get over to Westminster and get stuck in?
We had Simon, covering for Cory; Dan, Westminster regular (actually turned up surprisingly dry and we forgot to ask his secret); and Steph, GoodGym Bath's new trainer. If you're reading this out west then us London lot have given Steph a big thumbs up so get yourself down to Bath in October.
We jogged the two and a bit miles to St. Andrews Youth Club. That makes it sound easy. What actually happened was we jogged a bit, got out the old smartphone to make sure we were headed in the right direction, realised that touchscreens don't work very well when they are covered in water, dried it off with a tea towel, dried hands off with a tea-towel, swore a bit when it still didn't work and accidentally sent random symboled text messages to a few people in the address book, before giving up and remembering that we had a paper map.
So, we got there in the end - without stupid technology. And when we did we were greeted by Adrian who had a box of latex gloves, several bottles of dettol, paper towel (one of those big blue rolls of the stuff, you know what I mean) and about three tons of antibacterial wipes ready for us. Our job for the evening was to zoom around the club's gym - and the gym's attendees - and give the equipment a much-needed spring/autumn clean.
The gym's just one of the things on offer at the club which provides a range of activities for young people from the age of 5 upwards. There's also archery, music production, cookery, chess, capoeira, fashion, health and beauty courses, karate, arts and crafts and football!
The blaring music and serious iron being shifted around us gave us the motivation to work like crazy, and despite there only being three of us we managed to get round all the machines and left them looking much gleamier than we arrived.
We said thanks to Adrian and headed back via Green Park. Tourists Steph (from Bath of course) and Dan (studying in London, but originally from Milton Keynes) got really excited about Scotland Yard and couldn't resist a quick photograph of themselves outside "the place you see on the telly".
We stopped at Green Park for a little three-person (there were three of us, you see) sprint relay, a few press ups and pull ups on the railings, and a final blast up the hill (advertised as 200 metres, actually 400) before jogging the rest of the way back to the Uni for a stretch.
We said our farewells, Dan went to the pub, Simon ran home, and Steph went all the way back to Bath.
It's going to be sunny next week. There, I said it.
Westminster
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