Did you know that Jim Marshall, a guitar amp innovator, dubbed "the Father of Loud", worked in Hanwell? Marshall passed away in 2012, but his legacy of loud lives through a non-profit, free one-day festival: the Hanwell Hootie. On Saturday, live music was heard all across the town, from a local park, through a "busking boat", numerous pubs, a church and even a library. Loud in a library? Liberating, isn't it?

The Hanwell Community Library was the first place where six GoodGymers convened the next day after the festival to help with the teardown. Divya, who cycled to the task, beat everyone else to it. Anuj ran from the North-West and the rest of the runners from the East (think Acton junior parkrun).

One GoodGymer was coming from further East than that! John, a guest from Camden, ran from his area to us and, when reaching the library, he totalled nearly 20 km, thanks to a spontaneous decision to do an extra community mission in Ealing! Both John and Steph are training for next week's Hackney Half, so getting to the tasks on foot is a nice motivation booster for them.

Having quickly taken down the hessian that Sevan and Kash had put over the books on Friday, the group walked to Sandy Park where the task owner, June, awaited with a multitude of activities:

• Taking down four tents
• Cutting cable ties using various tools
• Loading vans with boxes and folded gazebos
• Riding at the back of the van
• Organising the reusable Hootie-themed pint cups into boxes
• Pondering whether the soggy, beer-scented cardboard is recyclable
• Playing a game with the cups that Steph can explain better

The Hootie team supplied us with water and fruit to keep our energy levels up to a good standard in the direct sun and after all the running. June thanked us for our contribution to the Hootie and invited us to a post-Hootie catch-up for volunteers later. The GoodGymers headed towards the Clocktower in Hanwell for some coffee and food, after which some of us were ready for either more tasks, running, cycling or an afternoon nap.

That's where the GoodGym at Hootie 2024 story ends. Hanwell will remain a quiet town until next year. But who knows!

We were back helping HANGOT this morning at their Elthorne Triangle orchard, an area we know well as it's right next to the tool container that we use in Elthorne Park. Kash, Anuj and Sevan ran to the site in shorts and t-shirt as it was another warm, sunny day. They soon saw that the other volunteers were all wearing trousers as today's task was to clear hemlock, burdock and lots of nettles from around the trees.

The GoodGym trio took what they thought was the simplest task, to clear everything from around a heritage fruit tree that HANGOT had adopted and was believed to be over 100 years old! There was no need to decided what to cut, everything had to be cleared in a big ring around the tree.

When the got closer, they saw that there was a huge patch of nettles growing around the tree. Not great if you're in running shorts. The team bravely got stuck in to the task, helped by one of the HANGOT volunteers who cleared the way with a wickedly sharp scythe. They then raked and bagged the waste, adding it to a huge pile of cuttings to decompose.

With such a large group of volunteers, the session finished up early, allowing some to leave and enjoy today's Hanwell Hootie.

We'll have another session with HANGOT scheduled for one of their June events.

On the Early May Bank Holiday, GoodGym Ealing had a different take on playing rock, paper, scissors.

The paper 📰, in the form of leaflets, was a weapon against something much more dangerous than rocks - waste 🗑️! The flyers to be distributed among residential houses around Ealing Broadway advertised a community project Ealing Sharing Space by the Circular Education Hub. At the same time, we dropped some leaflets for the Ealing Friends of the Earth.

In place of scissors, the greatest threat to the paper was water 💧. It seemed that we had picked the worst one-hour slot during the entire long weekend to do a leafletting task! Heavy rain was pouring out of the sky non-stop. The weather didn't scare off either the short-distance runners: Sevan and Kash, longer-distance runners: Steph Ducat and Anuj, or cyclists: Emmanuella and Alan.

A short briefing at the Ealing Broadway shopping centre explained that our aim for the morning was to promote free, weekly community events in Ealing Project cinema where residents can come together to share stories, skills (like sewing, upcycling, sustainable cooking), stuff (e.g. toys and books), and take practical steps against climate change.

We decided to target the houses between Ealing Broadway and Ealing Common. As we walked, discussions ensued about whether the streets we had picked were the good ones. The good ones usually mean streets with big houses converted to multiple flats or house sharing, but not necessarily expensive-looking family homes. We encountered a combination of residents' housing.

"This person drives the newest Porsche, I'm not going to drop leaflets there. They won't be interested in sustainable living."
"Was the car electric?"
"No."

"Maybe we are biased. Those who are better-off can be educated about sustainable living and interested in the activities we advertise."

The last street we hit was definitely a good one, with smaller houses and many letterboxes. That's when we ran out of leaflets that started getting damp. Those of us sporting weather-appropriate clothing held the flyers dearly under their jackets. The GoodGymers who had showed up today wearing t-shirts and sunglasses couldn't do much apart from still looking cool 😎 despite being soaked. With the distribution finished early, the drenched bunch marched back to the shopping centre to grab a coffee or hot chocolate ☕ to adjust their level of cosiness to an acceptable standard.

The Goodgymers were not only welcomed by our 2 and 4 legged friends(cats, dogs, goats, pig, chicken), but also by the sun 🌞😎. Welcome Nick to the Goodgym Family : 1st mission today!! Anuj and Beata have previously been at the farm and joined the crew after a Park Run at Northala earlier in the morning. First visit for Penny and Kate at the farm too. Several tasks for the team with some work to be done on the potato patch that GG Ealing put in place in previous missions which Steph Ducat attended. The potato patch put the team to their knees as weeding to be done between the onions and potatoes. Compost had to be wheelbarrowed from behind the cabin to the potato patch : mission was to create a hill around the potatoes to avoid them being above the ground and becoming green. were the team creating the hills of Northala??They grow and push themselves above the soil. The team realised it was muddy and the compost had mystery mud and a lot of straw. While 4 members were looking after the potatoe patch, Anuj and Beata were playing with compost, smelly compost!!! Not Jean Paul Gauthier fragrance!They were returning compost over from one box to another. After a hard session, a group photo and a pun discussion they all went for pizza, sausage roll, cheesy twirls, crafted beer and coffee in the sun. They bumped into Harvey who came over for a lovely pizza too.

Thursday evening and 5 goodgymers paws-tive(ly) meet at Acton station to then distribute leaflets around the station for the next Reduce and Recycle Hub at Acton Market on the Saturday 4th of May. Fur-tunately the rain stopped and the team walked from house to house for leafletting. As usual, the crew were welcomed or not by the pawdyguards. Who(of) are you? Dogs and cats alert on the goodgymers when approaching the letter boxes. Was it pawsible to deliver all the leaflets without being chased by our furry friends? Alot of dogs barking, luckily from inside but we had some brave cats defending their houses too!! Fur-ocious 4 legged friends and no Goodgymer was hurt during the mission. Appaws for the 5 goodgymers who covered roughly around 3km each and distributed all the leaflets. Pawsome mission!!