Thoroughly enjoyed my first session of 2019 with you fine folk, whilst my return coincided with a 50% reduction in attendance on last week, I'll just try and not take that to heart! As 18 is pretty damn okay with me. We welcomed two lovely new faces, Elise and Rowena, fine additions to our eclectic cumulative lunacy, i'm sure you'll agree.

Our weekly random question was met with some fantastic regaling of travel anecdotes (price to pay - probably a bit on the long side). "Tell us your interesting flight or general travel stories?" We had them all, take your pick from: sprinting through airports, hugging strangers as your plane plummets to sea level with turbulence, piglets running at your naked backside while answering nature's call, chinese grandmothers out-scaring chinese soldiers, incorrect lady boy assumptions and indecent proposals (this week's winner!), bullet train wrong stops, coaches to blackpool, getting stuck in china, having your passport seized, children smuggling (the ok kind), aromatic mega-buses, going to the wrong airport, having your band equipment taken by border control and a few i forgot. Crikey.

First jaunt to Ange's patch, The Adventure Playgorund this year. I arrived as she was telling Dan and James about a lad that got a massive splinter in his eye and another one that broke his elbow! It's all part of their risk-reward system. Kids should be care free and will occasionally get hurt, but they'll be stronger and wiser for it. Opposite of mollycoddling and i've got to admit I quite like it. Anyway - we were set to work on removing some wooden horses, plants, trimming a feral rosemary bush and moving logs by the dozen. For 18 people that takes approx 27mins. Hence by that logic, ~9hours for 1 person. Makes you realise how much of an efficient impact you guys make.

Before we finished up, a small bout of relays, 4 teams of 4 competing over about 300m. It was fast, frenetic but friendly. Good way to imbue some speed into your legs before we wrapped up. Some fine displays of effort out there. "Nothing is work unless you'd rather be doing something else" George Halas. And on that note, i'm a lucky chap.

Hoping we get a good turnout for parkrun this week, go easy(er) on Friday night and let's aim for a big turnout.

sign up for next week's session here and have a spiffing weekend

Till next week,

B