Good bye Tessa... hello Janet.

31 runners ran to weed to Holland Park estate and help out at the Portico Gallery

“As visits to the Portico go this one was pretty stand out.  An intrepid group of runners arrived to find John slightly distracted as he attempted to find a corkscrew so that Tessa Jowell's leaving do could kick off.  Apparently Tessa is going to run for Mayor.  Good luck to her I say she'll need to be better prepared than 12 bottles of wine with no cork screw! Goodgym goes above and behind and that also now stretches to purchasing corkscrews for the leaving functions of esteemed MPs. If you ever find yourself at the Portico in need of a corkscrew - cross the street, turn right and three shops down on the left. Once the wine was flowing in the Portico, John emerged to reveal he had had an eye operation - thus heavy dark glasses and dark hat (the hat wasn't needed just part of the outfit). He then took his glasses off to reveal heavily bruised eyes - in the dimly lit passage that leads down the side of the Portico this was a pretty terrifying sight.  Despite the heavy drugs he was on for the pain, he was on his usual excellent form.

There was rubbish to be cleared and the task was finished quite quickly until John announced that we needed to oil the Olympic ring - this turned out not to be a euphemism.  So we cracked on and oiled an Olympic ring thingamabob that was stuck down the side of the Portico. We asked John where it came from and he said the cemetery, at that point we stopped asking questions... Then we ran home full of Olympic dreams”

Sam

Holland Park estate

“Half the group ran just over a mile up Brixton road to the Holland Park estate to help Amena and Katya with some weeding, hoeing and general gardening tasks. After gathering a selection of tools and attempting to muster some look of landscaping prowess, a few of us naive and unsuspecting troops volunteered to help one of the residents of the estate, a lovely lady called Janet, by clearing some ivy from her garden.  'Some' is a mild understatement as we were greeted with what can only be described as 'a shitload' of ivy which had established itself as a weed carpet covering every inch of Janet's deceptively large front garden.  Although it looked quite daunting to start with, we actually made great progress - hacking away at the tangled roots with gusto, we cleared a good chunk of the foliage blanket and escaped with minimal thorn wounds. However, the next task came in trying to stuff the unwieldy branches into the green canvas carrier which could be transported to Amena's house for disposal...it soon became apparent, we were going to need a bigger bag! After roping in some more people we managed to stuff it all in and cart it off to await it's fate in the incinerator (I hope!). Unfortunately we ran out of time, and so were forced to leave the rest of the ivy to continue it's invasion of Janet's garden. But we will be back. The ivy may have won this battle, but we will win the war!”

Niamh