The latest Sunday session for Care4Calais, a charity that helps asylum seekers and refugees receive clothing appropriate for living in the UK, saw a sudden deficit of men on the task. The all-female crew, Angela, Libi, Kash, and task owner Tamzin, was capable of everything that the male GoodGymers could do, apart from one job: reliably testing the sizes of large men's clothes as trying them on would have been futile.

"The concept of being a large man is so abstract to me. How can I tell large from double extra large?" - Kash.

The community mission was the first Care4Calais session for Libi, who returned with enthusiasm for her second even GoodGym task. She joined Kash in making standard small men's packs, preparing customised parcels for hotels that received funding for clothing for refugees, and then sorting donated men's t-shirts by size - the trickiest task.

Meanwhile, Angela, already familiar with the basics of the Care4Calais system, joined Tamzin in making custom packs, carrying boxes up or down the stairs, and then helping Tamzin load the donations into the car for later distribution.

Tamzin has recently refurbished her Care4Calais hub, making more space for volunteers to work next to one another. We're looking forward to returning for the next session very soon and clearing the abundance of donations with double efficiency! We will be back for that task next week.

This was a super fragilistic soggyalidocious visit to Mr P's back garden. It took a little while for Mr P to get things sorted so he was happy for Kash and Harvey to crack on in the garden. It took most time to find those red secateurs, well, Kash found them near the end of the session. But, no worries, they'll come in handy next time!

There was ivy clearing to do so that Mr P's favourite trees could be seen again, and a new compost bin to construct for the cuttings. He's looking to create a peace garden as he says there are too many wars in the world, and what can an individual do? Can't argue with that.

After a short break from the constant downpur on Saturday, the havy rain was back on Sunday morning, bringing plenty of puddles and mud to Pitshanger junior parkrun course. The weather wasn't without impact on the turnout as only 30 young runners showed up and completed the course despite miserable conditions - well done to all of them!

Among three GoodGymers who helped out at the event, was Maria, who came prepared with an umbrella, with which she famously ran to the marshal post number 3. Sevan was guarding the marshal position number 1 and witnessed karma in action when one of top three runners decided to cut the corner and slid on the muddy patch. Kash came into the most contact with the puddles, running the course with the children as the tail walker.

Maria, apart from being an umbrella runner, came to fame, donning the 50 good deeds rosette and the Wonder Woman headband, and bringing her usual upbeat self to the otherwise gloomy day. Well done Maria - onto the next 50 good deeds!

Once upon a time in February, on a damp Sunday morning, two GoodGymers shunned the comforts of a weekend lie-in and headed to Pitshanger Park for a short but intense interval workout. Maria and Kash hit their usual spot: the Cafe Berry terrace, and opportunistically found a convenient refuge from rain under a huge umbrella covering two picnic benches.

This month's workout, like most of our winter fitness sessions, strayed away from sitting or lying on the muddy ground and utilised benches instead. Maria and Kash did three sets of five exercises: push-ups, dips, jump squats, lunges and side-to-side jumps. Did they get to rest in between? Only if you count jogging on the spot as rest! They wasted no time today, keeping their heart rates up throughout the workout and staying warmed up - just ahead of the monthly junior parkrun session.

A magic carpet job was not what Kash and Sevan expected when arriving at Ms C's for her now weekly mission. There was a roll of carpet in the bedroom that Ms C wanted on her living room floor to keep the room warmer. The problem was that the living room floor was covered with her belongings (yet to be decluttered), so it would need an impressive magic trick to get the carpet down. Together, they decided that it wasn't a realistic task to complete, so they moved on to other things.

For Ms C's second priority, Kash was banished to squeeze items that Ms C wanted to keep into the storage cupboards in the kitchen, or maybe it was a black hole as it kept gobbling up more and items. More than it should be able to hold. Kash spent much effort trying to convince Ms C to give things away that she shouldn't need.

"What's that?" Ms C
"That's a dart board" - Kash
"Do you play darts?" - Ms C
"I used to have a board"
"Do you play darts?" - Kash
"No. I just liked the look of it at the time" - Ms C
"Maybe you can donate it to the charity shop?" - Kash
"No, I want to give it to someone who really loves it." - Ms C

...and so it too went into the black hole. Maybe in the future Ms C will find a darts player who doesn't have their own board and it'll find its true home. Other exotic and unusual items made their way to the cupoboard, including a tortoise shaped lamp, a 1.5m long fake snake and Ms C's Halloween mask collection 👹.

As organising the cupboard was a 1 person job, Sevan worked nearby to fix Ms C's heated airer. It had been put together badly, so couldn't be unfolded. After a bit of cursing at Black and Decker's product design that made no sense to Sevan, he managed to get it into a usable state, then went on a grocery dash to the corner shop at the end of the road.

As Kash struggled to get the black hole to consume any more of Ms C's things, Ms C confessed.

"I'm a hoarder, but when I have that extra [storage] space outside, you won't think so." - Ms C

Sevan wasn't sure that having more storage space would necessarily help with that. Kash tried to explain the benefits of minimalism with limited success.

"When you're finished with me, I'll be a minimalist too" - Ms C
"It's like an addiction. You need to want to become a minimalist" - Sevan
"Oh, yes. I'm really quiet a neat person" - Ms C

There was something different to round off the mission. Ms C's garden was the location of Kash and Sevan's first mission together and the went to the garden again to feed the local birds. Sevan filled a cage with fat balls and Kash filled a dish with dried grub worms, making Ms C and the local avian population very happy.

Skirting Ealing’s lower borders, the Grand Union Canal leisurely bends this way and that – like a discarded piece of Brit-boiled spaghetti, perhaps, or a generous dollop of blueberry jam dribbled onto the edge of a green Ealing-sized, Ealing-shaped plate. For sure, it’ll eventually deliver its watery wares to the Thames, but it’s got no deadline and it knows it. However, as it glides blithely past Hanwell, it passes a series of orchards where things are more urgent. The space was reclaimed from its gritty industrial aftermath in 2017 and is now used to grow fruit trees, an initiative started by Hanwell and Norwood Green Orchard Trail (HANGOT, and no, we can’t think how to get the ‘U’ in there either). But the trees grew a little too enthusiastically last year, threatening the local ecosphere with something of a hug of death. They need cutting back, and the soil’s nutrients could use a boost. So HANGOT teamed up with GoodGym’s Ealing division to make that happen.

Lead by Sevan, GoodGym offered help in the form of twelve keen folks (“A raker’s dozen”, Sevan quipped), each keen to grab a shovel, a wheelbarrow, secateurs or, indeed, a rake. Steph and Harvey were amongst a group focused on defibrillating the soil back into life with shovels and a pile of mulch the size of a small hill. “This is beautiful mulch. The things that GoodGym teaches you…” mentioned Harvey, just in case you assumed mulch was anything other than oversized soggy wooden breakfast cereal. The pile was distributed and the trees were grateful for it.

Time for surgery via secateurs. While Team Mulch were busy wheelbarrowing their chunks of Soggy Brown Wet, Max and Sevan assisted the HANGOT volunteers busy chewing away the tree’s overgrown branches. (Though with shears, not teeth. HANGOT has no giraffes on their team…yet.) Both, however, were mindful of the brutally impressive two inch thorns that hedgehogged off the branches. “Whoever said ‘Nature is kind’ never had to deal with it repeatedly stabbing you in the hand”, Max murmured. (Sevan offered him a pair of spare protective gloves, and all was well.) The resulting bundles were piled into wheelbarrows and moved to areas that West London fauna consider impressive real estate. With the area cleared and primed for a fresh fruit crop destined for the Nutri-bullets of health-conscious locals, we moved onto the piggeries.

Spoiler: there were no pigs. Or a wolf. Or houses built from straw or brick, though there were plenty of sticks had any construction-inclined swines been available. In truth, it was more of the same here – but towards the west end of the enclosure, the overgrowth took on an almost jungle-like tone. So as we continued our operation (Mulch, mulch, mulch. Dig, dig, dig. Thorn, in, hand, ow.) we moved all the chopped-off wooden goodness to this natural biodiversity sanctum. And in the mild sun of a pleasantly warm February, it felt positively glorious.

With the work wrapped up, we went on our way to a local coffee shop at a gentle walking pace not unlike that of the Grand Union Canal itself. “We couldn’t have done it without you,” assured HANGOT volunteer Magda. Which gave us a final reason why doing good really can feel it, too.

It's been the third GoodGym evening in a row for me and yet another occasion to get soaked (maybe slightly less than on the Tuesday's and Wednesday's group runs). Ms F joked we should have started building an ark like Noah had done in the Bible.

It was good to see Ms F taking a humorous spin on the daily miserable weather we had been experiencing since... no one remembers when. I'm sure she had enough of water, though - both as rain and as bottles of Buxton still. She revealed she still had 14 bottles of drinking water, so I wouldn't be shopping for H2O on that one occasion.

Apart from the usual veg, fish, cheese and oatcakes (utilising three discount vouchers, woohoo!), I had a special order to fulfil: a Valentines treat! Waitrose had shown love to its loyal customers by treating them to a free pack of heart- or flower-shaped crumpets. The store must have shared that love very generously as when I arrived at the right aisle they'd been all sold out. No love for Ms F this time, unfortunately, but the lady was confident she'd get them another time!

10 GoodGymers making a difference in Central London!

It was the umpteenth rain-soaked evening of the year, and almost every Londoner was frowning and huddling in their attempts to stay away from the weather.

And yet this group of ten special people had decided to step into the evening!

David (on their first GoodGym session — welcome!), Kash, and Alex started the evening with a conversation-filled jog through Bloomsbury and over to Tottenham Court Road...

...where they were met by the happy group of Caitlin, Louise, Lydia, Paul, Rohan, and Steve :)

Our task was a common one for us during the winter months 👉 we were off to help set up the night shelter at the American International Church, which provides food, community, and warmth as part of the C4WS homeless support programme.

Our wonderful host (and fellow GoodGymer), Brooke, guided our efforts assembling beds, fighting with duvet covers, and setting up a dining room :)

Thank you, everyone! Here's to next time!