7 goodgymmers rocked up, in a socially distanced manner, to meet the lovely Iain from the council who would be directing proceedings for the evening. We had been asked to assist with essential leaf clearing of the paths to keep the park safe for users.

Iain had busily assembled brooms, leaf grabbers and a tonne sack, as well as the toy for the evening - a leaf blower! The task was simple - work along the main thoroughfares, particularly around the tennis court and portakabin where the leaves were stacking up, and remove the offending blighters into the compost bays at the far end, conveniently emptied on a previous task.

James was so keen he'd already set to with grabbers before Iain had finished speaking, whilst John was first to volunteer for transformation into a lean, mean, leaf-blowing machine. Vicky and Jackie demonstrated their expert broom skills and were on pile-creation duty, whilst Michael and Rich went for more grabbers and pile removal. You really can fit a lot of leaves into a tonne bag if you pack them in well, but soon enough it was full, and Michael and Debs took it for a drag to the compost bays. One was waiting empty, and was immediately filled by just the one bag of leaves. Somehow we managed to fit many more in as the evening progressed!

Iain had kindly illuminated the whole side of the tennis court path so we worked our way steadily along, sped up by the addition of a second bag. With half the time remaining we worked our way round the other 3 sides of the park, whilst John took on the leaves around the many many many benches (the author may have benchmarked them on a previous task...)

Job done we helped tidy away, and Iain was very impressed with our progress. "Do what you can" was the request - whole park it is then! Although there are many more leaves on the grassed sections leaving potential for a none-essential task when these are permitted again.

Thanks gang! Also apologies for the delay in writing this; brain like a leaky sieve...