I moved from serving teas and coffees to helping with the lunch service - chef Andrew had made a delicious bolognese pasta bake. There was a vegetarian option and both were served with salad. Dessert was fruit crumble and custard. Andrew got lots of compliments including from me as I sampled a portion - and got the recipe from him! There was a constant flow of clients joining us for lunch so the kitchen crew were kept busy. It was nice to get lots of ‘welcome back’ from the regular clients and makes me realise how much I enjoy volunteering at ESK.

It was great to be back at ESK this morning after a long break - I started the day at the tea and coffee station. There was a great demand for cereal today - Rice Krispies were especially popular. The cold weather meant that the guests needed warming up with hot drinks and we refilled the tea and coffee pots several times.

After a circus-style warm-up, full of jumping into and over bin bag hoops, Conor, Steph, Sevan and Kash ran nearly 4 km from Ealing to North Acton, which GoodGym hadn't visited for a litterpick for a while. The area might have changed dramatically over a couple of years, with its seemingly never-ending supply of new tower blocks, but what had not changed was the supply of litter in the alleyway cutting through North Acton Cemetery. Or maybe it had even grown bigger with the expanding population?

The runners met Maria, who had cycled to North Acton Station from Chiswick after having successfully repaired her bike. Well done! The five dished out council bin bags, litter pickers, hoops and even hi-viz vests to legitimise their litter-picking claims. And be safer in a poorly-lit passage.

The GoodGymers didn't need to travel far to find rubbish, as just within a few metres from the entrance to the alleyway, they collected six bags of litter in under 40 minutes. Apart from an industrial-sized brush that barely fitted a bin sack and some food wrappers, the collection of trash consisted mostly of drink cans and bottles from around the world. If that alleyway had been a bar, it would have served you whatever you wanted - you name it! Stella Artois? Check. Carlsberg? Check. Tyskie? Check. Corona? Check. Smirnoff? Check. Heineken? Check. Glen's? Check. Red Stripe? Check. And so on.

The team opted for depth rather than length of the litter research and cleared the section of the path that probably needed it most, leaving the rest of the passage for another time. Solid impact, everyone!

After a coffee stop, Steph, Maria, Kash and Sevan walked to their second community mission of the day at Care4Calais, where task owner Tamzin had collected lots of new stock from another C4C site, which needed to be sorted and stored. Looking into the stock room, there was nowhere to walk. The floor was full of bags, which was the huge task that team needed to solve.

There was a lot of variety in the relocated items, with the team sharing what they'd found in each:

"I've got women's large bottoms"

"A bag of bikinis?"

"This is a bag of babies. Don't open it!"

The babies were actually baby clothes and the sack they were in would contain hundreds of tiny items, so the advice from Tamzin was not to open that sack of worms today. Steph discovered a cache of handbags, there were stilettos, pillowcases and there was even a purse full of cards and cash, all 20 years out of date.

The donations either went into stock, into a charity donation group, one for rags...

"Is the washing machine on?" - Kash
"Yes" - Tamzin
"Good. If there isn't then it feels like there's an earthquake" - Kash

...or into the washing machine, if there was a chance of cleaning the clothes up for new recipients. The team wasn't working fast enough to cause an earthquake today. Must try harder next time.

Over 2 hours, the team had a huge impact in the stock room, with all of the newly received clothes cleared off the floor. Some sort of order was restored. As much as there normally was in the stock room, at least.

For the last mission of the day, Sevan and Kash ran 5km, with a pit stop for lunch, from Hanger Hill to Greenford for a repeat visit to Mr P, a former Kew Gardens employee, volunteer nature conservationist and generally an avid gardening enthusiast. Mr P's fragile health and limited mobility no longer allowed him to tend to his back garden the way he would like to, so GoodGymers acted as his extra pair (or two) of hands to make his vision reality.

Mr P wasn't feeling great that day, but did his best to stay in the garden for a part of the task and keep GoodGymers company, entertaining them with a chat. He mentioned the parakeets and robins (the latter seen first-hand on the day), nibbling on the bird feeders just in front of his bedroom window, that Mr P could watch in the morning from his bed. The gentleman also made some references to more or less famous places, shows and artists.

Did you hear about an artist called Marcel Duchamp? - Mr P
Yes, rings a bell. Did he create "Fountain"? - Kash
Do you know what it was?
A urinal?

Mr P mentioned Duchamp in the context of his garden, where he collected a variety of items obtained through the art of skip farming. He then transformed the objects into installations by painting them or arranging in intriguing settings, giving them a new life as creative decorations.

In that imaginative environment, Sevan and Kash chiseled a new work of art, shedding the garden's winter skin to shape the space into a spring-ready chapter of life. Both GoodGymers first cut back the ivy, dealing with particularly thick and difficult to access roots, which Sevan eventually defeated with conveniently bendy saw. Sevan also used his height to cut back the rogue shoots of a rose bush and Kash tidied up the garden of old, rotten planks and plastic containers.

80 minutes into the mission, it was time to pack the green wheelie bin and the composter, leaving no more space inside them. For Sevan and Kash, it was a perfect finale before running back home and letting Mr P have his lie-in to feel a bit better.

On a grey, British Sunday morning three GoodGymers were yearning for a different kind of weather. Through an energetic fitness session, they travelled around the world in 10 minutes in search for a more GoodGymer-friendly climate.

Steph, Maria and Kash took off from Pitshanger Park and set the course to a warmer Bulgaria where they performed a set of Bulgarian split squats. A jog North-West took them all the way to Siberia, where they had to use fast-drying towels to sit on to avoid freezing off their bottoms while doing Russian twists. With high-knees and front crawl arm drill the trio ran and swam to Japan to show Harvey what Japanese push-ups ups are. Did they know that well enough themselves to not look funny? Only Harvey will know. Finally, Steph, Maria and Kash grabbed their towels and swam all the way to Australian beaches to catch some sun and perform a set of Australian pull-ups and chin-ups.

Halfway through the session, they realised they had to get in time to Pitshanger junior parkrun to assume their marshalling duties. Their retraced their steps through Asia, with all exercises included, to land in Bulgaria and make their final stretch of jogging to Pitshanger Park. After all that travel, one became clear: there's no such thing as a GoodGymer-friendly climate. A GoodGymer shows up, no matter the weather, and brings enough enthusiasm and energy to power those around them.