On a dark and misty evening we gathered in the warmth of Old Spike for this week’s group run which took us a couple of miles north to Burgess Park.
Helena and Tom did a great job of leading the way and after about 20 minutes we had arrived at the Southwark Tigers clubhouse. After a warm welcome from Vernon, we had a look at the list of jobs that he had for us. It was a long one but with 18 of us we split up into lots of small teams and got to work.

Team Attic: it may have been dusty but they did a great job of clearing out all the junk and taking it outside to go in the skip when it arrives. It was like an episode of the generation game watching all the things that came out - picnic basket, giant rugby ball, half an oil drum, paintings that Vernon isn’t allowed to have at home and old records, some of which ended up going home with Matt.

Team Kitchen: having heard in the pre-run briefing that there was kitchen cleaning and reorganising to do, Sam, had nominated herself for the task and with a couple of others did a great job of getting things sorted and discovering quite how many drinks pitchers there were.

Team Damp-proofing: Helena D was tasked with the job of finding any damp patches on the walls and covering them up with damp proof paint.

Team Benches: on our first visit to the Southwark Tigers about a month ago we got creative and painted the team’s benches. Having won the ‘best bench’ award that time, Emma, showed the others how to go about making the benches look a bit more Tiger. Lianne had to be dragged away when it was time to leave, she could have stayed all night perfecting her masterpiece.

Team Shirts: Hanna was the creative director for the evening, bringing a bit more order to the rugby shirts hanging around the room. There is an impressive array of signed shirts and it was interesting to see how the Southwark Tigers shirt has changed over time, from cute smiley faced tiger to scary big clawed tiger.

Team Pots: ably assisted by Tom and his light, a small team helped Cynthia tidy up in the garden area round the back of the clubhouse.

When we were all finished there was a bit of time to tick one of the other items off our list of things to do, ‘have a biscuit and cup of tea’. We did our best tiger impressions for the group photo and headed off. We waved goodbye to a few runners who live along the route home and got back to Old Spike feeling great about all that we had achieved.