The 400th Acton junior parkrun (big celebration, woohoo!) brought 94 little finishers and some GoodGym legends as well!

Maria and Steph looked fresh and energetic, not indicating at all they'd just walked an overnight marathon, The Shine Walk! Congratulations both! If completing the race in 6h 19min itself wasn't enough of a feat (it was!), then how about reporting to junior parkrun duty in the morning to help set up the course? Some of you may call it craziness, we call it dedication!

Maria, with a shiny diamond still left in her hair from the race's glittery outfit, directed children into the funnel, and Steph gave the first timers a warm welcome and briefing, and then marshaled near the funnel.

Alan and Kash were the gatekeepers - marshaling at the South and North gates. Kash dealt with an emergency shoelace fix for a boy whose mum apparently hadn't heard of double knots.

It was quite a gap between the supersonic two leading girls and the tail walker, so the marshals enjoyed more time in the gentle autumn sunshine until the brand new fluffy fox tail has passed them. What a fantastic morning was it, finished with a chat over coffee!

On a very sunny Sunday afternoon in September, when it felt like summer was making a comeback, seven GoodGymers assembled in Pear Tree Park to join a riverside path-clearing session organised by Ben from Clean Up River Brent. The event was part of Ealing Climate Week and coincided with the ActForEaling social. ActForEaling is a coalition of nature & climate groups, and GoodGym Ealing are their partners.

While some of the other organisations opted to have a stall to promote their cause, GoodGym was all about hands-on action, so we headed straight towards the River Brent for the task. With shears, loppers and litter pickers in hand, the team disappeared into the thicket, opening up the overgrown entrances and cutting back vegetation to allow safe, comfortable access for visitors. Perhaps even more fittingly for Ealing Climate Week, we also collected litter that was plaguing the sides of the path. The further west we travelled, the less obvious the route became, meandering around a dried-up stream ditch or getting swallowed up by the previous flooding.

After more than an hour of clearing and tidying the path, we returned to the ActForEaling event near Pear Tree Bistro to collect free drink vouchers and meet some familiar faces. The occasion brought together several past and present task owners: Mary from ActForEaling & Ealing Repair Cafe, Elisabeth, formerly leading Acton Litter Collective, and Trevor from Ealing Transition.

Trevor had some great news: hedgehogs had been spotted in the Lammas Orchard, so our support with building their habitat had finally paid off! If you are interested in more projects led by Ealing Transition, including energy saving, schools' solar generation, food-growing skills, beekeeping and biodiversity restoration, join Trevor's storytelling talk next Sunday morning in South Ealing.

Today's mission for Ms P had 3 key elements. Weeds, pears and poo. Only 2 of them could be squeezed into the pun in the report title though.

GoodGymers had been to help Ms P in the past, including Kash and Sevan a few years ago. Kash remembered that the garden looked simple, just 2 long flowerbeds at the sides and slabs in the middle, but it was deceptively time consuming to tidy up. She had a good memory 🧠.

There were a lot of weeds in the first flowerbed and at least they were easy to pull out. There was also a lingering scent of Eau de Catlogne, even if whatever the cats (or foxes) had done wasn't very visible. As they worked, Kash and Sevan chatted to Ms P, who was feeling a bit lonely as her son wasn't able to visit. Soon enough, they'd cleared the flowerbed and the slabs around it, so it was onto the next area.

It was on the other side of the back garden where the GoodGymers found the source of the eau-dor in the second flowerbed. Kash spent most of the time on this side scooping things out of the giant litter tray. The weeds in this bed were much deeper rooted, so more digging and time was needed to clear the same amount of space. The neighbour's pear tree also hung over the flowerbed, so there were semi-rotten pears to be speared with forks and disposed of with the weeds. Surprisingly, there were 2 undamaged pears that Ms P said that she wouldn't eat herself, so she offered them to Kash and Sevan at the end of the mission. Pearfect 👌.

A week ago, GoodGym Ealing celebrated winning the Team of the Year award from Southall Community Alliance, the organisation behind the Western Road Urban Garden. This Saturday morning was the perfect opportunity to live up to that title!

We arrived as a team of six, ready to take direction from Ash, who never disappoints when it comes to sharing a clear vision for what we want to achieve. The community day was also a chance to meet Natalie from SCA, who normally leads some of the mid-week sessions at the garden, and Harry, a new volunteer she recruited.

We also welcomed a new GoodGymer, Nadia, who chose Western Road as her first GoodGym experience. Great choice and fantastic work, Nadia!

Ash's vision today was to move the outer border of the veg patches further out to expand the growing space. The job included:

1. Clearing the nettles alongside the hedge along the fence
2. Removing the paving grids and the membrane underneath them
3. Tipping, raking and stomping on soil (donated by the police!) to raise the plot borders
4. Laying and pegging down a Terram membrane (apparently much more effective than the old one)
5. Laying the grids on top of the Terram

We managed to transform the border on two sides of the growing area and made a start on the third, which was a result worthy of the Team of the Year! By the way, Kash brought the trophy to Southall to present it to the wider team helping at WRUG, as this had been 100% a team achievement.

By the end of the session, Ash was pleased to list three outcomes that the dream team had completed:

1. Delineating the new border of the plots
   
2. Making the outer hedge more manageable
   
3. Expanding the food-growing space

It was a lovely day of teamwork and doing something good for the Southall community.

We're at Western Road again very soon – check out the sessions and come along: Community garden day - Tuesday morning and Tuesday afternoon!

After few weeks of missing the weekly shopping for Mr G, I faced a change in Sainsbury's layout and realised I'm not such an expert in Mr G's groceries anymore. The majority of his list hasn't changed though, so after learning how to navigate the updated store route, I could walk it with my eyes closed.

The shortage of baby potatoes didn't go unnoticed, but I was able to buy what British call "baking potatoes" - basically, larger potatoes. I also picked up a bigger bottle of milk for Mr G, which should last Mr G for a week, unspoilt.

I headed to checkout, where I dished out 40 pounds in coins. The till didn't choke even once. They must have improved the machines.

Back at Mr G's, the gentleman praised the new volunteer David, who had done a couple of shopping missions in my absence. Before heading back home, I revealed that the shopping visit to Chiswick Sainsbury's is always an opportunity for me to buy cheddar mini muffins, not available to me locally. I bragged about their irresistible flavour so much that I offered to share one with Mr G. He agreed it's a delightful light snack, so you may see it on his list next time!

The award-winning Ealing Half Marathon is one of the events of the year for runners and supporters in Ealing and across the country. Our group of walkers, wanderers, minstrels, travelers, joggers and runners gathered together for a key job ahead of this year's half on 27 September - advance notice signs of road closures. Yes, sooper dooper important for our supportive local residents to know what's happening on the day.

This was a carefully planned logistical enterprise, with weeks and months (well, minutes and hours) of high level project planning (well, some notes on Harvey's iPhone and jumping on the bus with a bag of signs). Two groups were formed, with members chosen for their specific skills mix after significant testing and modeling (well, the people standing together on one side at our meeting spot, and, erm, the people standing together on the other side at our meeting spot). It helped that we had a range of heights within our team because street furniture (esp. lamp posts) is our bread and butter. There was a slight suspicion that one group was competing with the other to get their share of signs put up first. Or was it that they wanted to get home in time to watch the football? Whatever.

A year out from the last time we fed cable ties together, you wouldn't believe how many different kinds of lamp posts there are! You might not actually care, but you would if the lamp post was too fat to get your cable tie around!

We guided around our section of the half marathon route as the sun set over the West Ealing tall towers (how romantic).

Before we finished, there was just time for Sevan to enact a culturally iconic Bob Dylan music video from 1965 (hence the title of this report). Then, like rolling stones, we blew in the wind, to head off and knock on the heaven's door we call home.