The Bristol Phone Massacre

Scrap! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing....

Or perhaps it's good for a lot of stuff. 28 (yes... 28!) runners met at the Folk House and merrily gamboled their way over to The Scrapstore in the St Pauls area of Bristol. It was a cold night but we were once again blessed by the weather gods and it was dry. Not that it mattered as for once, as GoodGym Bristol were inside for our task.

The Scrapstore takes unwanted stuff from offices, warehouses and other sources and stores it all in a massive building. It then has 2 purposes - to be purchased by playgroups, schools and other similar organisations to give kids stuff to play with, and also it gets put in to 'playpods' which are then hired by schools.

Our task was to prepare scrap for these playpods. Sorting floor tiles, cutting up fabric and rope, taking legs of chairs and de-boxing telephones, we had a lot to do and not much time to do it. With 30 minutes on the clock, would we make it in time?

Such an attack on scrap has not been seen since Scrapheap Challenge went off the air. Scissors flew, chairs got legless, tiles got filed and phones got zoned. The GoodGym Bristol crew were a force to be reckoned with. As the clock ticked down to 0, it turned out that there was just one box of phones to be sorted so like pack of wolves the gang massacred the boxes and sorted like a big 56 armed sorty thing.

Here's a bit of perspective: In just over 30 minutes we sorted the same amount of scrap that it would take two people 6 weeks to sort. The power of GoodGym is mighty, my friends. Playpods will be filled and kiddies will have many happy hours inventing 100 different games with what otherwise would have gone to landfill.

We didn't have much time to run back so we upped the pace and got back to the Folk House just as the bell tower at the top of the road chimed 8pm. Congratulations, ladies and gents! You've run and done good. Keep it up!