Report to follow.

The ongoing weather saga continued, and over the past week we’d had just about every weather condition possible each day, and Monday was no different. Brilliant sunshine on the way to work in the morning, a torrential downpour by lunch, who knew what the evening had in store for us?

Well, we did know. It had a mission at St Michael and St George’s church in White City! Eight of Hammersmith & Fulham’s finest, along with Harvey visiting from Ealing (hey Harvey!) came to tackle the garden and the church grounds, after we took a rain check last week (and toy-deed up instead).

Ben (now referred to as GoodGym Ben), Jess and I met with Ben the Vicar outside the church and he went through the tasks at ask for the evening. It was slightly strange that only three of us had turned up, surely the impending threat of rain hadn’t put that many people off? More work for the three of us then, and we got to it. Then, Bethan came round the corner, shortly followed by an army in red... The rest of the gang had turned up! We could really get to it now.

• Jess had elected for the rubbish job, and went around with her litter picker collecting all the little bits of rubbish. From face masks to crisp wrappers... and a pair of star patterned pants.
• GoodGym Ben was weeding in the back corner, and clearing the pathways of brambles and green bits from where they shouldn’t be.
• Klara was back for her second task, and got to work on a patch of weeds, getting down to the root of the bramble problems, which Vicar Ben was mightily impressed with.
• Analiese heard there were choppers about, and having demonstrated her best bush trimming skills the other week, chopped away at the overgrown hedge and the ivy poking through the fence.
• Bethan and Harvey were getting the paths cleared so there was broom to get through again; pulling up things that shouldn’t be there. How sweep is your glove? Bethan and Harvey would know the answer.
• And I, well, I was being useful, a little bit of weeding, a little bit of chopping, a little bit of sweeping, plus the important job of photographer (making sure I got everyone’s best angles).

We were all getting on with things, and filling up the big sacks of garden waste, when Cookie turned up! We saw him briefly, and then we didn’t. Assuming he was doing something useful, we carried on, and then Katie ‘Meet-you-at-the-task’ Hodges came wheeling up. She joined Beth and Analiese on the path outside the church. Chop chop, get to it!

On my photography mission, I went to find where Cookie had snuck off to. After a loop around the whole block (and a litter-al run in with Jess), I found him. He had been given his own special task of ‘hacking away at as much of this bush as you can’. He had taken the task very seriously, with his big chopper at full swing.

Things were looking good, we’d already made a big difference and filled the huge sack up with weeds and brambles and all sorts. We were doing a final sweep, tidying up, (or in Analiese’s case, ‘project managing’) when Vicar Ben asked if we could help Cookie finish up. Having almost forgotten about him on his solo quest to beat the bush, we went round and found him knee deep in twigs and leaves. ‘He did say hack away as much as you can’ Jonathan shrugged.

We were now on for a race against the rain to get all of what was once a bush into the waste bag. The sky was looking ominous, and soon the boys had the bag loaded up. A quick group picture, an easy peeler from Vicar Ben and then the heavens opened. Just as we finished.

The timing was path-ect.

Apart from we were all now loitering in the shelter of the church, watching the rain teem down. Cookie was first to go, ‘I’m already wet’, he said, set his strava and sprinted off into the distance. The rain seemed to be dying down, and the rest of us took that as the opportunity to get onto our bikes and cycle off home.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d managed to get about 3 minutes away from home when the rain started to pour again. And despite everything, I got home very very soggy. Chop work though tonight, everyone. Weed did good.

Report to follow.

Another day in May, another day of deciding whether to wear your shorts or your winter raincoat to your GoodGym mission. We met outside St Michael & St George’s Church in White City as the skies turned an ominous shade of grey, and thankfully vicar Ben had opened up the doors to let us in as the heavens started to open.

Most of us managed to stay dry, apart from Big Little Beth, who had decided the best place to take her important phone call was right in the middle of the pavement in the eye of the storm. We were all judging her, until she informed us it was a meeting with the baking society at uni, and all of a sudden it was okay (don’t want to risk her not bringing us any brownies ever again!).

Inside the church, Ben was explaining that our job for this session was to help sort out all the toys in the crèche. We needed to throw out any broken or unsuitable toys, and give the ones we were keeping a good old clean up. There were also a few boxes of old books and hymn sheets that needed decanting into recycling bags.

Klara (on her first GoodGym mission - welcome!) and Jess got to work on the recycling, whilst the rest of us took a box of toys each to have a sort through. There were some broken cars and bits of plastic that had perhaps belonged somewhere else once upon a time, which went into a black sack. There were also some questionable soft toys, to which we played a game of ‘keep or creep’, with the latter making the bin. Louisa seemed to enjoy this one, and the general consensus was that if it was creepy, we would not keep.

The toy tidying was disrupted for a brief interlude at this point. Jess had just found all the animals for the wooden Noah’s ark when the storm subsided and Lucy called everyone out to admire the rainbow that was arching over the church. This hiatus was an opportunity to rally the troops for a group photo outside the church, before we continued on with the toy-dy.

In the church hall, Emily, Tom and Jonny had finished their boxes, and were giving them a good old wipe through, whilst Andrew and the two Beth’s were separating brio from building blocks and stickle bricks. Once we had sorted all the toys, we needed to give them a clean up and the boxes a wipe down. Unlike the words of Destiny’s Child, I think the toys were ready for this gel-ly. We wiped down and sanitised the toys, before organising them into boxes separated by category - one for puzzles, one for the wooden train set, one for the tool kit toys and so on.

We’d managed to get everything sorted, cleaned and packed up, and the black bags were taken to the bins so that the old toys could go on to you heaven. Ben thanked us for all our hard work, and had some easy peelers as a thank you. Orange you glad you all came along for those lovely juicy fruits?

The weather had put a stopper on our other task for the evening, which would have been in the church garden, but that just means we will toy-tally have to come back next week!

They say third time’s a charm, and Tuesdays task at the church of St. Michael and St. George’s in White City was just that. It was instalment number three of clearing all the garden waste from giant bags into black sacks, so it could be disposed of and taken away. We had spent two missions previously working our way through ten of the giant industrial carriers, and there were only five or six left to finish the job.

We had faith in the team that tonight would be the night. The numbers had dropped for some reason (the heavens had been open all day, and didn’t look like they were going to be stopping for us). So six brave and slightly soggy GoodGymmers took on the task, and were greeted by Ben the Vicar who set us off to work.

We had an A Team of Aine, Arba and Andrew; plus Beth, Lucy and Harvey who had come to visit from the lands far away in exotic Ealing (great to have you for the evening, Harvey). The first bags were loaded up into the mini van to be taken away for disposal. The van was aptly named ‘Lucy’, and she was driven off into the west London rain as the other Lucy arrived on her own set on wheels. Perhaps disguising her secret alter ego as a doing-good transformer? As Beth said though, ‘there would have to be a nuclear explosion for Lucy to miss a task’.

Andrew and Harvey worked hard and managed to get through the first bag in impressive time. Aine has arrived and got ‘stick’ in with Beth, shifting the mulch from one bag to another; whereas Lucy was delicately moving bits of wood one by one, as she continued her ‘exposure therapy’... This task always seemed to be full of snails, and Andrew helpfully advised Lucy to avoid the yellow bag, where a family of molluscs were enjoying the British weather. Rather than get stuck in like the others, a more gentle approach was taken (thank god the others were more efficient)! Arba was also there, demonstrating unbe-leaf-able multitasking skills - managing to snap twigs and scoop leaves whilst listening to a webinar AND dealing with Lucy’s Tuesday trivia...

‘Waitrose was the first supermarket in the UK to sell hummus, but what year was that in?’

Aine was the closest, with a guess only a year out; and also managed to show off by winning some of the other questions courtesy of quiz mistress Lucy. She then decided to take things into her own hands (and not just the bits of tree she was moving between sacks):

‘Which county in England was graphite discovered in?’

There was some deliberation, and then the answer from both Lucy and Harvey: ‘Cumbria’! ‘Correct’, came the reply from Aine - and off we went on a discussion about the pencil museum! Can’t wait for the GoodGym pub quiz olympics now (although better keep an eye on Harvey and team Ealing for competition)!

With the drizzle, our minds filled with knowledge and the impending anxiety of a snail attacking at any moment; before we knew it we were down to the last bag. With a final flourish, Beth tipped the last remainders into a black sack. Bags all tied up and stored around the corner, we got a big thank you from Ben (plus some satsumas as a treat for our hard work), and Harvey got his traditional post-task selfie with the team.

Off we went, third time lucky, mission accomplished. Nice to have you with us Harvey, and nice to have you back Andrew! Hopefully next time we are taken to church, we will be in the dry and in a snail free zone..

(Also in answer to the Waitrose question, hummus first appeared in UK stores at a major supermarket in 1988). Hope that enlightens you and you can show off your new found knowledge to all your friends and family.

Another Tuesday evening equals GoodGym H&F! Tonight we had a two task Tuesday! While one group headed over to Hammersmith to lend a hand at TRAID, another group headed up to White City to help out at the Church of St Michael & St George.

It was a case of déjà vu from the last time we were at the Church of St Michael & St George, with many GoodGymers walking, running and cycling past the side entrance of the church! Hidden amongst some overhanging vegetation was the 'secret' side gate to where everyone was gathering to tackle tonight's task.

The group were greeted by the vicar, Ben, who explained the task at hand - another case of déjà vu, we were helping with the same task as before - moving garden waste from giant industrial sacks into smaller black sacks so they could be taken to the tip. Bags of fun! We knew the drill! We gloved up, passed around the black bin bags and spread ourselves out around the giant industrial sacks. The group set to work with everyone gathering up armfuls of twigs, branches, and cuttings from the industrial bags into the black bin bags.

Ben helpfully prepared all the black bin bags ready for when we needed a fresh bag to fill - I'm sure many minutes were saved with us not having to struggle to find the opening of them...we've all bin there before!

Team AABC: Aine, Analiese, Beth and Chris worked at one end of the industrial bag train like a well oiled machine. They quickly filled up lots of bin bags with the twigs and cuttings and worked together to cut down the larger twigs and branches into 'bin bag friendly' sizes using the secateurs on hand. It wasn't long before they were delving deeper into the bag, amongst Lucy's favourite 's' word! 🐌 . Thankfully, we didn't need to save Lucy from them tonight as she helping out at TRAID....although we do have a TRAID and tested method of doing so!

On the other end of the industrial bag train was Team Imperial: Bethan, Tom, Christian and Helen. This team seemed to have some larger and thicker branches in their industrial bags, along with some very tangled branches which when Bethan pulled them out resembled antlers!

Tom expertly negotiated the thorns and snails in the bags, proving he wasn't no 'Tom, Dick or Harry' and rather an expert hand! As the team got to the bottom of the bag they found piles of soil and after gathering it up using hands only, Helen and Christian decided to speed the process up by tipping up the bag into the bin bag, before implementing a quick sieve like action through the small hole at the bottom of the bag to finish the job - genius!

After an hour we'd conquered all four of the full giant industrial bags and they were now all empty, ready for the gardener, Andre to fill up once again - you could say that weed had our fill of bagging up garden waste! We took the final couple of bin bags around the side of the church and piled them up on the very large pile of about 30 black bin bags that were ready to be taken to the tip.

Ben thanked us all and handed us all a lovely juicy satsuma to finish the night. Following a brief chat with Ben we all said our goodbyes and headed off in our different directions home. Top work team! 🙌

Big welcome along to Christian who joined us for their first GoodGym session - great to meet you, hope you enjoyed it!