I was last to arrive, which was embarrassing as I was leading the mission, as I grossly under estimated the time it would take for me the run the 10k from my house. I downed two glasses of water while people finished their cups of tea and met some new and newish goodgymers Amy, Amy and Jasmine. We were triple Amying at this mission, which made everyone’s name easy to remember! Three Amys are better than one!

Once I had recovered from my run, and everyone had finished their cups of tea, we headed outside to get cracking. There were two smaller henhouses and one big shed/henhouse. Lynn, task owner, had also provided three tins of brightly coloured paint; two smaller tins and one big tin. We started painting accordingly. Liz, Miranda, Amy and Amy started on the smaller hen houses, whilst me, Andrew and Jasmine got stuck into the big shed. Before we knew it the two smaller hen houses were done in record time! Everyone who had been working on the smaller henhouses came and joined us on the shed. We quickly started to run out of paint, so Lynn had to make an emergency trip to B&Q.

While we awaited the extra tin of forget-me-not blue one of the residents asked if we would paint her bird box with some of the leftover pink paint. Liz happily agreed and set off to do that. The rest of us had a play on the outdoor gym equipment outside the community centre. A chicken wandered over and seemed very interested. One of the residents showed me some round decorated slabs that Equal Arts had made with local school children. A few of them were in remembrance of his departed wife.

Once Lynn arrived back with the second tin of paint it was all hands-on deck to finish the big, (now) blue shed. Liz had to head off slightly early which was a shame as she missed the home-made food. It started to rain slightly so we hurried inside to tuck into cheese and onion quiche Lynn had made us with eggs collected from the chickens and a nice cup of tea. She decided to make something vegetarian after there were so many veggies at the last mission! Once we demolished that she produced a rhubarb pie with warm custard!

We ended the mission with three hen houses painted and full of quiche and pie. We hope to get invited back as Wood Green is always a pleasure to visit!