You can stand under my umbrella

Today three bleary eyed runners arrived at 7:30 to Hilly Fields to help out the volunteers set up for the Hilly fields fayre later on that day. The dream team consisted of myself (Mridula), Vickie (my arch nemesis) and Ruihua (a very dedicated runner). You know, Goodgym summer missions aren't all about destroying people's gardens. You can go break tents and marquees too!

This was my first mission with Vickie but we had run together quite a few times at goodgym Greenwich. She and I are dangerously neck and neck on our way to 50 missions and I am determined to beat her and get there first! I wanted to do a mission with her and told her about this one, because it gave me a chance to scope out my competition. However it upped her mission count, so I really didn't think this Machiavellian manoeuvre through.

We arrived at Hilly Fields to watching a man putting hazard tape around the area. We wondered if we were approaching a crime scene. I've watched a lot of episodes of CSI, but I felt that pulling a Sherlock would beyond my realm of expertise. Fortunately though as we climbed up the hill we started to see the starts of a fayre including the marquee and a couple of food trucks. We had arrived!

As we approached the head of the Fayre (the lovely C) we were joined by Ruihua. C had a lot going on and was figuring out where to assign us, and Ruihua used this time to practise her plank form. Vickie and I were sporting hangovers to we decided to practice our standing still and not falling over.

Vickie and I were assigned to go help secure the covering to the Brockley Society Tent (broc soc for those in the know) We had to attached the covering to the tent using do-berries (the technical name for them), and then help raise and secure the marquee. We had 8 volunteers simultaneously raise the legs of the tent, and a job that had taken 4 hours previously took us around 20 minutes. We then had to peg the tent to the ground as the morning was super windy. Vicky questioned my DIY abilities when I tried to shove a peg in using the palm of my hand. She gently handed me a mallet and wisely decided that I should be the one to hold the peg in whilst she hammered it in.

Our next task was assigned to us by the scariest species of human, the clipboard holders. Whilst they have the ability to guide you through your mission they also can be terrifying and hard taskmasters and can make you question every life decision you made which led you to talking to them. We were told to put up the signs for the fayre in the far corner of the field and to hurry up as all the stall holders would be arriving soon. Vickie paid attention to these instructions and went to work with an appropriate sense of urgency. I, on the other hand, got distracted with playing with a French bulldog named Molly and had to be told off.

We were then asked to head over to S, and his daughter J to help set up the bake off marquee and tables. The fayre itself is entirely volunteer led and it was lovely to see father and daughter get involved in something like this. Vickie used to do a lot of pub work (both her parents owned pubs) and made light work of getting the parasols up for the seating tables. I on the other hand broke a parasol because though my intentions are good, in practice I'm a bull in chinashop.

Two and a half hours later we were done! Vickie and I had to head off at 10 as we both had other obligations, but as we were heading off a mini choo choo train arrived. This seems like a great fayre to attend. I managed to get a sneaky shot in on the train, and then we were off! Me to go to a swim lesson and Vickie to catch a train up north and start a well deserved vacation.

Whilst she vacations I will be doing many many missions and inching closer to beating her! If you want to follow the most important (only to me) and closely watched (only by me) race in the history of goodgym (slight exaggeration) please help me and Vickie out by making sure the missions we sign up for go ahead by getting yourselves mission verified, and signing up for them too. You will get a mention in the most read (again just a slight exaggeration) run reports on the goodgym website. That should be incentive enough (it really really isn't, but the missions are great fun and an opportunity to help people out). Till next time folks!