Mrs J's late husband was the computer whizz. Mrs J had worked a secretary in the past and she'd never gotten to grips with the relatively new Windows 10 laptop at home. She still held a fondness for her old, chunky Sony laptop that had stopped working. Now, with Mr J no longer able to help, it was time for the 96 year old Mrs J to learn some new skills.

Getting a laptop set up for an older person to use was challenging for Kash and Sevan. They had to make setting changes as they went to make it easier to read or to use, which left Mrs J's head spinning. She must've felt like she was at the optician.

"Do you prefer accessibility option A or B?"
"A...?"
"...or B?"

There were some things that the GoodGymers couldn't change, like adding physical, clicky buttons under the trackpad. They did what they could. Mrs J was still unsure though and her eyes and brain needed a rest, so with her laptop configured, the next session to help should be easier.

Sevan and Kash decided to spend their day of GoodGymming in three different boroughs outside their home area of Ealing. After leaving the Chiswick Eyot in GoodGym Hounslow, before it got cut off from the dry land by the Thames high tide, they continued their journey eastward. The 3.5 km run took them to GoodGym Hammersmith & Fulham, where Mr A awaited their help with sweeping leaves in his tiny back garden.

"I don't know how you are going to do that without a shovel. Last year, a man came with a shovel to do it." - Mr A.

The GoodGymers also learned that their predecessor was an Englishman proficient in gardening. Since neither of them was an English gardener, there was no point in measuring themselves to such distant standards. They decided to simply get on with the job. Kash went downstairs to evaluate the difficulty of that seemingly insurmountable task.

"We will just do it with our hands." - Kash.

As it turned out, Mr A had brooms and dustpans, so using only hands was not even necessary. In 30 minutes, Sevan and Kash swept and packed up not only dried leaves, but also all the creeping weeds they had pulled out, then they moved six sacks of green waste to the front garden. Unbeleafable!

For this time we had quite a team with Sevan, Kash, Maria and Amy joining us from Ealing! Most of use were here early, joining the existing volunteers of Thames 21. They publish these events broadly and as a result, on top of regular, they always have a few new faces as well, one of them who came all the way from... Stratford! We also meet Annie who has been joining the a few of the Eyot missions by herself until now. After a long and detailed briefing, covering the ins and out of Balsam, we depart towards the Eyot, equipped with Thames Mud Proof Wellies. Despite the sunny weather of the past few days the mud is as sticky as usual, since the Thames tide never stop. Getting into the island, we spread thin as each person hunt for Balsam. The bravest ones, such as Sevan, go and open up a new path in the middle of nowehre to hunt for the invasive one. After a couple of hours of slashing, searching and uprooting the team finally disband as some of us need to go to the next task. A nice bounty from this session!

Mistakes and miscommunication happen to everyone. Standing in front of Mrs H's house on Saturday afternoon for their final task of the day, Sevan and Kash found themselves ringing the doorbell and calling Mrs H to no avail. Eventually, after 10 minutes, the lady answered Sevan's phone call, tired and surprised to find out that they were waiting at the front door. Mrs H was convinced that the mission was on Sunday and wasn't ready physically or mentally for the task to go ahead the day before. The GoodGymers had no choice but to admit defeat and jog back to Ealing earlier than expected.

Mrs H, although not knowing how the mistake had occurred in the first place, was full of regret about what had happened. She apologised to Sevan, then tried to call GoodGym on Saturday to reschedule the mission, yet no one could have picked up as it was the day off for the Missions team. Then she received a phone call with an offer she could not refuse. Well, she could have! But would you say no to Kash? Although Sevan was already busy on Sunday, Kash did some calculations after returning home from the failed mission, and figured that she could make it to Mrs H on Sunday afternoon, if she took a train from Putney, where she was expecting to finish another mission at 15:30. And that's what she did.

On Sunday, Kash ran 2km from where the train took her, and landed at Mrs H shortly after 16:00. As a single GoodGymer, she managed to cut the grass at the back and the front gardens, then speed-trim the hedge that was obstructing Mrs H's driveway. Mrs H couldn't have known that Kash simply doesn't like accepting defeat, so she was full of awe for the commitment.

"I won't forget it till the rest of my life."

The lady was full of kindness and gratitude and offered Kash a range of things, from tea and biscuits to a lift to the station (which wouldn't take Kash anywhere as the Piccadilly line to Heathrow wasn't running). Kash settled for a tea, then ran back 6.5 km to Ealing. As for Mrs H, she got her garden back. As for Kash, she got her mission. And as for defeat? It only got to enjoy its victory for about 24 hours.