On Sunday, 26th October, the clocks went back. According to the This Girl Can campaign, that night marks the time when almost three-quarters of women in the UK change how and when they get active outside out of fear about their safety.

To raise awareness about that gender activity gap and urge communities to change behaviours towards women that make them feel unsafe outside in the winter months, Let's Lift the Curfew movement, together with GoodGym and England Athletics, hosted over 320 events across the UK. One of them happened in Ealing!

We were looking forward to our group run, excited to see a fifty-fifty split between boys and girls in our sign-ups. Ultimately, we ended up with twice as many men as women, which might have been a stark illustration of the This Girl Can research, highlighting the barriers to getting active that women may experience outdoors after dark.

Undeterred by fewer than expected women showing up, we ran to Acton, 3 km each way, to find other ways to encourage women to stay active and healthy. We had 450 leaflets from Action West London, inviting Acton women to participate in free, inclusive fitness programmes: from strength and mobility classes for women aged 50+ to courses about strengthening the pelvic floor.

To distribute the leaflets promoting the events, we set off for a 3 km walk through Horn Lane and the streets East of it, occasionally astonished by hop-on hop-off buses cruising through nighttime Acton and slightly disappointed by the poor numbers of Halloween decorations. We managed to drop all the flyers through the letterboxes and are hoping that the initiative will help more local women discover opportunities to stay active, healthy, and connected.

Next week, we will slightly shift the theme of our group run and visit the Lammas Orchard a.k.a The Garden of Eden, where we will be clearing the spaces around mature fruit trees and more recently planted saplings, then mulching around them. Sign up now to join us!

I arrived at Mrs Z and prepared my translation tool to Urdu as mentioned in the mission guidance, but when the door was opened her daughter had come to welcome me and opened the side door the back garden. So no Urdu lesson for me today - maybe next time. Once in the garden I had a look as we were not sure what needed to be done, but we figured it out with her daughter. I needed to mow the grass, get rid of brambles and one section along the wall needed weeding and getting rid of unwanted items. I found the mower, but no power or extension lead. Mrs Z went on the hunt for an extension lead and came back with several small ones connected one to the other, but it would not reach the section of grass and not safe. So extension on extension was not the solution and told Mrs Z daughter we need a long extension on a roller to reach the grass and avoid it tripping. Once sorted, I cut the grass, got rid of the brambles and cleared the back section of the garden plus the plant beds along the wall. I collected 2 bags of greenery and as her house is along a street seems that people through rubbish over the wall. I collected rubbish and broken bottles from the garden.

For GoodGym Ealing's second compost task of they week, they became purveyors of fine compost, free to a good home, allotment or dog peeing spot. Anyone could turn up with a container and take away as much as they'd like. Opening the tool storage, the 6 GoodGymers present were surprised to find 2 barrows prefilled with compost as well as the shovels and wheelbarrows essential for the task.

The barrows turned into another job for the team as Steph, Max and Jo went to fill the second bay in the Walled Garden, continuing the work from Tuesday's group run. Today was Jo's first session with GoodGym and she did an amazing job, shovelling compost like a pro with the others 💪 🥳 👏!

Back at the giant compost heap, the team again tried to guess that was in the compost based on it's pungent smell. Definitely not food waste according to Kymm and probably something leafy. Familiar faces appeared as Claire and Madhan took away a couple of wheelbarrows which the team filled up for them. Let's see what they grow with it at their Northfield allotments plots. Others came too with bin bags, shopping trolleys and one woman had come all the way from West Acton with a folding cart (and a car).

"I'd like some black gold please" - Woman with cart
"Well, we have around 2 tons of it. How much would you like?" - Sevan
"Oh, I'll take a ton" - Woman with cart

She had 10 bins bags, which didn't quite come to a metric ton. Still, she was really grateful for what she was able to wheel away to use in her garden. The team wrapped up at 12:30 having done a good shovelling shift, leaving the remaining heap to gardeners who'd brought their own spades and excited dogs, who'd find a new favourite digging spot.