After arriving at their first task on a North London mission day out, Ealing GoodGymers Sevan and Kash were greeted by Ms G's brother, who travelled to his sister's earlier in the morning to support the task. He used to help her regularly with the garden. After battling his own health issues, his ability to tackle physical jobs deteriorated, leaving him in a state every active person finds difficult to come to terms with.

While Sevan and Kash got into the gardening task, Ms G's brother kept them company and made their morning brighter with a good chat. The GoodGymers learned that he used to volunteer for Age UK and was a big believer in the what goes around comes back philosophy.

Sevan and Kash removed weeds and turned over soil in two overgrown flower beds, pruned a tree, pulled out bindweed, and started on moss scraping, while the beneficiary's brother helped them sweep and bag the green waste.

Ms G came outside to see the progress and later the results of the work and was very appreciative of GoodGym's help. Both siblings were grateful for the transformation that had taken place in only 90 minutes.

It's a miracle. It's like two angels coming to help us! - Ms G's brother.

What a fantastic start to a Sunday - a morning spent supporting a couple of really lovely people!

The mission Sevan and Kash had signed up for was advertised as cutting back a garden ahead of Bonfire Night. Unfortunately, no GoodGymers were available before 5 November, or even the following Saturday, when Bonfire Night would likely be celebrated. The task eventually went ahead on Sunday.

Mission Control had prepared Sevan and Kash for the eventuality of not having any tools on hand. That scenario materialised when Mr T announced that he had neither equipment nor bags for the garden waste. While the task was supposed to focus on the overgrown front garden, dotted with brambles, rumours had it that tools could once be found in a shed in the back garden. Unfortunately, Mr T thought the back garden was completely inaccessible and didn't encourage the GoodGymers to try that route. Sevan and Kash had two choices: admit defeat and back off, or use their hands. They chose the latter.

Luckily, both had their bramble gloves with them and started pulling out thorny plants and snapping sycamore saplings. For the thicker brambles that they couldn't pull out by the roots, they resorted to good old-fashioned Stone Age tools. Sharp-edged rocks may be inferior to a pair of secateurs, but they're equally deadly against brambles in the hands of a determined GoodGymer.

Halfway through the task, by which point the front garden already looked much better (although the waste couldn't be swept up and bagged), Sevan and Kash encountered Mr T's neighbour. The neighbour explained the challenges posed by Mr T's back garden and took Kash on a tour to show her what it looked like from the neighbouring house's first-floor window. It was basically a monster of a bramble forest, untouched for three years, bulging against the fence on the verge of collapsing into the neighbour's garden.

The GoodGymers decided to borrow the neighbour's shears and use the last 30 minutes of the session to convince Mr T to let them investigate his back garden and see the jungle first-hand. And a jungle it was! There was certainly no way to guarantee making it Bonfire Night-proof, even if three sessions had taken place in the previous week!

Behind the back door in the kitchen, the first thing they discovered was vines hanging down the entire length of the stairs to the garden. Just past the entrance, Sevan and Kash spotted a box of tools under a cover. The roof wasn't technically a shed, and the protruding handles of the tools looked too good to be true. The GoodGymers were right not to get their hopes up too high.

All the tools were covered in rust. The loppers moved without needing WD-40, but had a big gap between the blades, which rendered them unusable. The shears wouldn't close, and the pruning shears wouldn't open. In the tools department, the GoodGymers were back to square one. Sevan found a rusty saw in the toolbox and pressed on, hacking away at the brambles and vines as best he could, while Kash took the neighbour's shears and ventured forward, cutting a narrow corridor through the brambles along the fence to see if she could make it as far as the mythical shed or the back fence.

Kash made it quite far into the jungle, stopping about two metres before the end of the garden. She could make out the back wall or fence behind the brambles in front of her. There was also a shape on the much more overgrown left-hand side, but she couldn't cut through the old, thick brambles with the shears. Whether the mythical shed had fully collapsed, and whether there were any tools inside, remains a mystery.

Mr T's jungle is one of those gardens in the GoodGym world that may look insurmountable, but Sevan and Kash believed that, with enough people helping across multiple sessions and the neighbour's support with tools, a difference could be made. The Gunpowder Plot may have failed, but the plan to tackle Mr T's garden was still very much a work in progress.

Not the cheese on Mr T's list - which is always the regular lump of cheddar from Lidl - but a crossword clue "Somerset Cheese" but which wasn't cheddar which then had us both scratching our heads. Somehow we not only covered cheeses in today's pre and post shop chat, but the Spanish Inquisition, the Spanish Civil War, and how hard it is to judge form during the Winter flat racing season...

As with quite a few of these tasks in previously unvisited parts of London, I needed help from a kindly neighbour to find the right entrance to Miss B's flat, but once in, it was straight down, or in reality up, to work.

First task was to replace some pieces of her curtain rail that had broken off, as well as rehang the curtain pelmet where some of the clips had come off the rail. I needed to refer to one of the other rails to determine how it all went back together, but after a few downs and ups on the ladder, I had it figured out and all back in place.

With the curtain done, Miss B asked if I could take a look at her kitchen window, whereupon she produced a long pole with an L shaped hook on the end which she has to use to push up/pull down the window as it's way out of reach above her sink.

After a few determined pushes, I got the window to move up and down, and then sprayed all the surfaces with some 3in1 oil to try and make it all run a bit smoother - it felt much better, and at least was now sliding up and down as it should be, but it still needs quite a bit of effort with the long pole. However at least Miss B can now close the window and stop the draught coming in, which is a huge improvement.

Had a nice cup of coffee and slice of cake with Ms F. She seems well. Shopping easy enough but two members of staff had never heard of beetroot salad. Second choice of water brand. Fit this in nicely with an afternoon off following a book haul nearby.

Went to Mr R during lunch as I was working roughly 2 minutes away from his flat. When I arrived, I found out that the light in the bathroom was replaced, but the lights in his bedroom were not working. So I got the bulbs from Mr R and replaced the room bulbs...all bright in his bedroom now.