Defibrillators are serious and comic at the same time, depending on how they're represented. A local mental health charity, CAPE, wanted to fund raise for a defib at their office and had asked GoodGym Ealing to distribute leaflets to nearby residents to promote their cause. This was the serious side of defibs as they could be used to save a local person's life. The team still managed to conjure up some laughs on their route though.

A circular route around CAPE's office had been plotted for this session to deliver half of the 700 leaflets that CAPE had printed. The plan took Maria, Kash, Zain and Sevan along some streets with beautiful, large houses. There were the usual obstacles along the way. Conversion flats up or down stairs, hidden letter boxes, feline distractions, barking dogs and lost Kashs that had gone off route.

The A4 sheets were a bit of a challenge with the letterboxes as they needed to be folded one or twice to fit through. By the end of the session, each team member had perfected their own zen paper folding strategy to quickly post the sheets and finish with no leaflets left 💌. They had also covered around 5km of walking each in 90 minutes, which is pretty amazing.

We'll be distributing the other half of the leaflets soon, so if the obstacles listed are actually things that you love, look out for our next session where you can meet many cats, be startled by dogs behind doors and walk around a beautiful part of Ealing searching for a missing Kash.

Sevan and Kash ran up Hanger Hill from Acton and met JP from GoodGym Richmond, who was back for his second Care4Calais task in faraway North Ealing.

After sorting donations at his previous C4C session, JP had advanced to the trainee pack assembler role, working under the watchful eye of task owner Tamzin. He discovered all the joys and frustrations of putting together family-size parcels, where there's always something impossible to find. Pack-making can give you a sense of fulfilment, but it's not a remedy for those who seek completion. Some questions remain unanswered.

"What colour is that?" – JP
"Olive?" – Sevan
"Guy only wants grey clothes." – JP
"It's olive-y grey." – Sevan

Kash was tasked with identifying the "true small" womens winter coats by trying on various outfits, from oversized gangsta coats to ring-ready boxing robes. Afterwards, she joined Sevan in sorting children's clothes by ages 6–13 – a task into which they carried over their rock band theme from the day before.

Ooh, nine is bigger
Bigger than eight
But eight not me
The lengths those arms will go to
The difference in your eyes
Oh no, I've said too much
I set it up

The clothes for nine-year-olds also prompted a venture into foreign-language lyrics territory.

"Nine, nine..." – Kash.
"Nein!" – Sevan.
"Oh, I'll sing you a song with «nein» in it! Du, du hast, du hast mich..."

The gig lasted two hours and finished with plenty of packs prepared for asylum seekers and a huge Amazon bag of children's clothes sorted into appropriate age groups, or at least, we hoped so, as none of us was a "true nine-year-old"!

Sunday morning run and the 4 usual suspects were here at Ealing Broadway Station for a 3km chatty run. We were on the move or the Mo as both Maria and Steph Ducat were doing a virtual run for Movember. After a 3km run the 4 Musketeers reached Acton parkrun to volunteer for the juniors.

"What are your names?" - Mr P
"Kash." - Kash
"...and Sevan" - Sevan
"That sounds like a rock band!" - Mr P
"Well, we are the rock stars of volunteering. 👩‍🎤👨‍🎤" - Kash

Mr P had an unusual decluttering task for the rock stars. Taking coats and jackets from his bathtub and throwing them in the bin. The aim was to get him one step closer to having his bathroom replaced.

Why were there coats in the bathtub and why were they being disposed of? They'd been put there briefly while Mr P's hallway was redecorated, then he had a heart attack and the clothing stayed in the bath for a while longer, ending up pretty dirty. Now housebound, Mr P didn't need his jacket collection anymore.

The GoodGymers knew that the clothes would be valuable to a charity if they were clean. Not knowing who in the local would take on the effort of washing or dry cleaning them, they agreed to bag them up and throw them out. Kash and Sevan had both been to enough Care4Calais clothes sorting sessions to give the clothes a once over before getting rid of them.

"Let's check the pockets."
"There might be some cash left in there." - Sevan
"Probably with the queen on it. Queen Victoria!" - Mr P

Most of the jackets came up empty for hidden treasure... until the last one, sitting at the bottom of the bathtub. It had a handful of coins, but not only that. There was also a pair of gloves to keep Mr P's hands warm - very useful - and an envelope, which he took and put back in the bathtub 🤷.

On the way out, the band put the bags in the metal communal waste bin and headed off for their next gig 🎸.

A 7km run took Sevan and Kash from Hanwell to East Acton, where they visited Mr R, a regular recipient of GoodGym gardening service. Since the last mission, Mr R's back garden became quite a thorny subject, with roses growing tall and brambles abundant.

With loppers and secateurs found in the shed, the roses have been tamed, and brambles pushed back, leaving Mr R feeling much happier about the state of his garden.

Mr R's garden was in the shade, so Sevan and Kash didn't get to enjoy the afternoon sunshine, and by the end of the task, they felt the air had become a bit chillier. It was quite a relief that the next mission to run to was an indoor one!

It was a glorious and surprisingly warm morning in Hanwell when team GoodGym and team HANGOT met on Saturday. They made the most of it with a long walk along the sunny side of the canal to one of the furthest orchards from HANGOT's base, Blackberry Corner.

HANGOT's plan for the day was to prepare the orchard for winter and also be good neighbours to the nearby canal users. There were a few jobs to complete:

1. Cutting vegetation along the fence line to give more light to canal users
2. Clearing weeds from around the trees
3. Stopping animals from eating their bark
4. Checking for any damage or disease

Clive from HANGOT explained that there were small muntjac deer in the area who loved to eat the bark of apple trees. There were also rumours of giant rabbits around too who did the same. That wasn't the only rumour at today's session as there were stories of an animal paw being found in the cuttings pile 🐾😮!

The first 2 jobs would allow the team to tick off 3 and 4 as well. Kash and Steph grabbed shears and worked along the orchard's east fence, cutting away weeds and tree suckers. They also found dead branches that the boaters had cut from high up in the trees, so they were scooped up and added to the new cuttings pile.

Giles and Sevan trimmed circles around the fruit trees as HANGOT often do to give the trees' roots more water and less competition for nutrients from the soil. They also spot checked the tree guards gaps to be patched. Giles went on to rake up cuttings from HANGOT's scythers which all headed onto the new cuttings pile too. As the session came to an end, Sevan dipped into the old cuttings to use as mulch around the tree trunks.

This was the last task of 2026 with HANGOT as work winds down for the year. After a tough summer for all of HANGOT's orchards, Blackberry Corner was left in a good state to welcome winter and hungry animals 🦌🐇. We'll be back in January for HANGOT's next Orchard Love Day, preparing for the coming spring and new growth 🌱.