Monday, the 13th of July 2026, marked a new era in Mr G's shopping: his groceries were about to enter the digital age!

The regular mission beneficiary, well known to a group of West London GoodGymers for his unusual "book of labels" shopping list, artistic flair, and razor-sharp wit, decided to switch to online shopping. His objective was to supplement, rather than entirely replace, the end-of-the-week GoodGym shopping missions. The hope was that Mr G would be able to buy food more independently, including larger quantities of store cupboard items he couldn’t carry home himself.

Sevan and Kash signed up for this quest to render themselves obsolete as Mr G's shopping helpers - or at least reduce his dependence on GoodGymers' weekly availability.

Two GoodGymers and the beneficiary sat together around a 15-year-old laptop that dictated the pace of the mission, suspensefully displaying a blank browser window for long stretches, keeping everyone on the edge of the fashionable 1930s chairs.

The good news was that Mr G (or someone acting on his behalf) had already set up a Sainsbury's customer account, filled in his address details and special instructions to carry the purchased goods upstairs. Mr G even had the correct details recorded to log into the account. He had also already added a few items to his virtual basket.

During the mission, the GoodGymers introduced Mr G to the ease of using the search box rather than looking up items by category. The gentleman went through the user flow himself with minimal guidance, although he couldn't resist commenting on the website's UX and advertising from the perspective of a former professional in the display and sale of high-end products.

Some of the items Mr G selected for his basket reflected what Kash, Alan or others regularly used to buy in the physical Sainsbury's, but there were also items Mr G wouldn't always have on his weekly list. Chicken korma ready meals turned out to be a huge disappointment, as there were no such products available without a ton of rice in the portion, no matter whether one looked in a store aisle or on Sainsbury's website. There were difficult words like quiche to type and important choices to be made about the toilet paper.

"Cheap, but not just the cheapest one - that looks abrasive!"

Mr G was quick to make decisions about the product alternatives.

"I don't want the Taste the Difference - I cannot taste the difference!"

Eventually, the trio arrived at the checkout. The checkout had even more distractions than the product pages and countless screens to click through, evading the retailer's attempts to sell Mr G even more stuff.

The last hurdle, after selecting the delivery slot, was entering the payment details and navigating the credit card’s two-factor verification, expertly guided by Sevan. In the end, an order confirmation page appeared, resulting in an explosion of cheer entirely unrelated to the World Cup.

The delivery slot was diligently noted down. It was a successful "dry run", as Mr G put it - hopefully just the beginning of an era of greater independence. The gentleman felt much more confident about online shopping after going through the process once, but would love to have someone beside him one or two more times to become more familiar with the flow.

When a pair of Ealing GoodGymers walked to their afternoon task in Greenford, Kash immediately recognised the unforgettable hedge of eternity on the way - a 100-foot green monster she'd trimmed last year. Kash was pleased to see that the hedge, although still insanely tall, was maintained well enough not to cause trouble for pedestrians and cars parked next to it.

Now, what awaited Sevan and Kash at Mrs E's and her husband's place, who happened to live a few metres away from the Hedge of Eternity? Were the monstrous hedges the norm in the area?

The Sunday afternoon mission beneficiaries were a couple in their eighties who used to care for their front and back gardens, but were no longer able to do so due to their declining health. The back garden was seriously overgrown, but Mrs E was most anxious about the front garden and the impact of the uncontrolled growth of plants on the neighbours.

Kash, with the assistance of Mrs E's husband, fired up the heavy petrol strimmer and started trimming tall grass in front of the house. The smell of burnt fossil fuel made her think about how many new trees she should plant to offset all those greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, the weight of the power tool, the heavy vibrations in the arms and the impact on the older couple's wellbeing felt good.

Meanwhile, Sevan didn't have as intense an experience with his tool in the back garden, where he was cutting back the tall weeds at the house wall with shears. Occasionally, he would pull some roots by hand to prevent regrowth. The shears were not perfectly aligned and a bit blunt, but Sevan persevered with his task. On a positive note, he got to hear stories from Mrs E and her husband, who sat at the entrance to the back garden. Sevan also had a more frequent supply of cool water from the lovely older couple than Kash did in the front.

After Kash raked the grass with a huge rake ("This size would be perfect for a tennis court!" - Sevan), she came to the back to take Sevan's shears. Even though they weren't sharp, at least the shears were more effective than smaller secateurs against larger clusters of weeds. Sevan persevered no matter what and continued his work with the smaller cutters.

In the meantime, Kash did a speed trim (as speedy as she could with rather blunt shears) of two parts of Mrs E's hedge that stuck out the most. So there were hedges after all! Mrs E joined Kash this time for a chat and revealed her impressive past as a volunteer and a member of the neighbours watch for a few decades!

Sevan came to the front to help sweep the cuttings and pack the green wheelie bin to the brim with garden waste. Mrs E was very happy to see the bin loaded as it had already been paid for, but no one was fit enough to do the weeding, trimming and strimming to fill it.

There is more work to do in both front and back gardens for Mrs E and her husband, so now the Ealing GoodGymers are looking forward to a follow-up mission for such a nice older couple.

The third session with Clean Up River Brent this summer eventually brought us a new chapter in the river’s story: planting! After hacking the unwanted plants last month, Andrew, Steph Ducat, Sevan and Kash were back at the Gurnell / Sixty Trees Way in Greenford to prepare the riverbank soil for the plants that had finally been delivered to Ben from CURB. The Ealing GoodGymers were joined this time by Maxime from GoodGym Hounslow and balsam bashers Andres and Mark.

While the team was getting into wellies or waders on that hot July morning (it was already 30 degrees!), Ben lined up the boxes with plugs and a bag of reeds in rows. The plants were arranged in the order in which they would be placed on the riverbank:

• Juncus - their grass-looking plugs would be planted directly in the gravel, where the water was shallow; their superpower is to filter the junk out of water - they are amazing at fighting the river pollution!

• Iris - those flowering plants can tolerate either very dry or very damp environments (depending on the variety); their beautiful flowers easily attract both human and pollinator attention.

• Typha a.k.a. bullrush - according to Ben, those were the plants whose dark brown spikes looked like cigars; we couldn’t tell that from the appearance of the young plants yet, but could imagine them as a typical wetland inhabitant that is great at accumulating toxins from polluted water.

• Reeds - or Phragmites; those aquatic plants can easily grow taller than a person (maybe not taller than Ben); their roots are excellent at filtering out impurities from sewage water, which sadly enters the River Brent.

• Hemp agrimony - this herb’s fluffy florets are irresistible for pollinators; despite cannabinum in the name it’s not the cannabis you may be thinking about.

Ben was hoping for three outcomes of our successful planting session:

• Improvement of water quality

• Habitat creation

• Boosting the riverbank’s aesthetic appearance

Before we got to planting this Sunday, we had to spend some time preparing the soil, which, despite being so close to the water, was quite dry in the hot weather - and full of tangled bramble roots! That’s why we’ve left some of the planting fun for another session in two weeks. Fancy joining us in this biodiversity quest? Sign up now!

Early Sunday in Ealing with cooler weather conditions, two Goodgymers who were wide awake not like most of the residents went for a chatty run. As Ealing was waking up slowly due to the late Saturday night England football match, Kash and Steph Ducat went for a chatty run from Ealing Broadway station to Acton Junior parkrun to meet their fellow Goodgymers who for some stayed up late and were hiding their small eyes behind shades. On the run, the sun started to warm the atmosphere and we noticed several water streams in the streets of Ealing until we found a spray of water. Was Kash going to run through it to cool down?Water way to start a Sunday. After a 3.4 km run they both rejoined the GG Crew

There were a few regular runners missing at Acton Junior parkrun this morning, which may have something to do with last night's England vs Norway game at the World Cup that finished late. A few tired eyed volunteers were seen with their sunnies on. The children, the parents or maybe both needed a lie in too, so there were only 40 finishers with a huge 19 volunteers!

After Kat led the warm up, the runners made their way around the course with the runner at the front storming away, finishing nearly a minute ahead of second place. They ran past Alan, Michelle, Steph and Sevan who were all marshaling, then through Kat (again) now as funnel manager to Divya scanning barcodes. The only GoodGymer which they wouldn't have noticed was Kash who was tail walking again at the back.

Well done to Kat for coming all the way from Uxbridge early this morning to keep her Community Mission streak going 👏👏👏! If you're as dedicated and motivated as that, we're back at Acton Juniors again next week, so check out which roles still need to filled and check out how to sign up here.

Back at Mrs A to meet her son and continu the battle with the rising brambles. Her son had 2 empty wheelie bins for me and he stayed outside as cooler due to the breeze. Bramble gloves on and snipping plus pulling was the moto for the afternoon. I noticed nice berries and said to her son, lets taste them and see if ready to eat. They were, so I asked him if he had a container so we could pick the ready ones for him and his mother. Good idea he said. As I was getting around, I picked the good ones and so did he. Underneath the brambles, found the front of his dads car, golf balls and a pair of secateurs. Time was up and the 2 bins were full to the rim like the container with berries which both Mrs A and her son could have either like that or with some yoghurt as we discussed when picking them up. Before I left was able to picture small grasshoppers that I noticed during the session.