After a morning of cheering almost a record-breaking number of young runners at Acton junior parkrun, four GoodGymers went for a 6 km walk to another task in Ealing. Maria stepped in at the last-minute to join the session with Care4Calais after finding out that a slot had unexpectedly freed up. Well done, Maria!

Sevan, Steph Ducat, Kash and Maria met with task owner Tamzin, who had three types of jobs for them.

Pushchair washing

A wave of donated baby 4-wheels just hit Care4Calais - some particularly grubby - which meant that Kash’s services were in demand. As the usual pram cleaner, Kash swapped her socks for crocs, grabbed a brush and a hose, and spent a decent chunk of the session enjoying herself outdoors, giving used pushchairs a good jet wash. She even found a 10-pence coin - a tip for her efforts - in one of the vehicles.

Men’s clothes sorting

Who would better handle categorising and organising mixed-up men’s stock than a double-act of GoodGym guys? Sevan and Steph powered through all sizes of masculine outfits, including a quite niche 6XL pair of trousers. They found a range of formal apparel: suits, shirts and waistcoats, unfortunately, inappropriate for the asylum seekers living in hotels. The session had a record number of unsuitable donations: from heavily worn underwear to non-clothing items such as a deodorant or hunk soap, which were deemed to end up in a bin or a charity shop.

Making packs

Maria lent Tamzin a hand with making parcels for adults and children, including shoe packs and bags with school uniforms. Tamzin had special goodie bags for kids containing water bottles, notebooks, hair clips and bands for little girls. Maria even packed some really cute carrier bags made of material that felt like a teddy bear!

The last 20 minutes of the task everyone spent packing up excess sorted men's clothes into temporary boxes and bags, then stomping on cardboard shoe boxes to fit them in a recycling bin. Four GoodGymers got so much done in just two hours! Tamzin received a full 8-hour volunteer workday of help to support refugees in a single GoodGym session - how impactful is that!

There were a lot of children at Acton Junior parkrun this morning. It was a surprise to most people, including the Run Director, who hadn't planned for it. Only one of the regulars told Sevan:

"I forgot when the school were coming" 🤫

Yep, a school had encouraged their students to come along today and it had doubled the usual number of runners. Acton Juniors had gained 60 extra participants. Most GoodGymers reported that it was either "busy" or "chaos" with Maria reporting lots of corner cutters, Steph's high fiving hands were working overtime and in the funnel, children and parents were backing up as Sevan tried to scan all of their barcodes. Chaos reigned until reinforcements were put in place.

Kash was tail walking on her 100th parkrun volunteer and to her, everything was pretty normal. The extra numbers didn't make any difference to what was happening at the back of the field.

It took longer than usual to wrap everything up. Most of the new children looked to have a good experience and with any luck will become regulars in the coming weeks and months.

Early Sunday morning and the 3 usual suspects met in front of Ealing Broadway Station to then disappear in the streets of Ealing towards Acton Park where they were going to volunteer later. 2O minutes later and they were ready to marshal. tail walk and scan the young runners at junior parkrun. Nice and easy run with some chatting and catching up.

The last mission of the day for Kash and Sevan had an intriguing title, "Cut, trim and shape garden". How does someone shape a garden? Would they become garden designers? The GoodGymers needed to find out and arriving at Mrs J's home, they could guess what was meant. There were two trees that had been shaped like balls.

Mrs J greeted them and explained that she'd become partially sighted 18 months ago. It meant that she could see some things well and other things were more difficult. Gardening was no longer possible for her and that was tough as she loves gardening, which the GoodGymers could still tell by looking around. Under the cover of grey clouds, Mrs J eyes told her that was too dark to do any work. For Kash and Sevan, even though it was overcast, there was definitely enough light for a few more hours, so they got started.

As expected, Mrs J wanted the GoodGymers to reshape the topiary at the front of the garden. The balls had grown and lost their shape, so an expert was needed to smooth their fuzzy edges. As Kash loves trimming hedges, Sevan volunteered her for the task, leaving him to the "cut, trim" part of the mission.

Kash grabbed Mrs J's shears and a step ladder for the high work, starting with the camellia tree. Sevan worked in the flower bed below, pulling out weeds and having a steady drizzle of camellia leaves and dead heads land around him. As Kash reviewed her work from different angles, trying to create the perfect sphere, Sevan moved onto the other flower beds and trimming the bushes and shrubs in Mrs J's front garden.

Part way through the mission, the pitter patter of camellia leaves changed to the more traditional raindrops falling on the GoodGymers' heads. Mrs J came out and suggested to Kash and Sevan that they stop. As the rain was light and there wasn't much left to do to complete Mrs J's 3 priorities, they powered through to achieve Garden Shaper status and leave Mrs J's garden weed free.

It had been 3 years since Kash and Sevan last met Mr S and not much had changed. Kash and Sevan were a bit older. Mr S was older too and a bit weaker, but his personality was exactly the same as Kash and Sevan remembered it.

The task for Mr S was the same as 3 years ago too. Getting the lawnmower out of the garage, where it was sitting between 2 classic cars. Plugging in the very long lawnmower cable and getting instructions from Mr S on how to Fly his Mo through the knee high grass and chop it back down to normal height. Mr S, as last time, sat, observed and managed the power cable, reeling it in and letting it back out to prevent any cable slicing.

Kash took the one person task of hauling the Flymo that couldn't fly high enough through the long grass. Sevan looked for something to keep him busy, so Mr S asked him to weed the patio. As Sevan did this he chatted to Mr S about how he'd been, visits from his long distance friends and his plans for the future. Mr S said that:

• He'd been better. His heart had stopped a year ago and, when it restarted, he called 999 and now he had a pacemaker
• A good friend from Poland was still coming to visit twice a year and looking after his garden, while some ex-students were also keeping in touch and passing through London
• An extension was being planned to make it easier for Mr S to live at home

Mr S was still an investment banker at heart and dished out life and financial advice:

"You need a little cash in savings and a little in your current account."
"Invest the rest."
"Use your money. Life is for having fun." - Mr S

If the cars and the international circle of friends was any indication, Mr S had definitely lived a fun life.

Back with the gardening, Mr S's gardener friend had created a compost pit next to the apple tree. The grass cuttings, weeds and everything else went in there to turn it into a mountain of future compost. Something for Mr S's friend to look forward to making use of when they next visit.

Clean Up River Brent (CURB), led by Ben Morris, has been very successful in recent years in removing Himalayan balsam from the banks of River Brent. What is Himalayan balsam, and why would anyone want to get rid of it, you may ask. The plant, native to the Himalayas, was brought to the UK in the 19th century for its ornamental qualities. Over the years, it became dominant on many riverbanks across the country. If left unchecked, the invasive balsam can exclude other plants and decrease biodiversity, as it’s not compatible with species living around it. This tallest annual weed (reaching even 3 metres in height!) dies each year and leaves no roots in the soil, which does not help hold the soil together and stop silt from washing into rivers. Silt, in turn, decreases water quality by blocking sunlight from reaching the water and helping spread pollution.

CURB’s plan for 2026 was to reduce balsam in Ealing to zero, and GoodGym Ealing were excited to find a Saturday to help Ben and the team with that ambitious mission. One walker, two runners and four cyclists from GoodGym met the regular Balsam Bashers at Brent Viaduct to walk up- and downstream the river and scour for baby balsam to curb it (pun intended) before it grows and flowers.

James, Richard and Kash went with basher Rachel to visit last year’s balsam hotspots, including a vast area GoodGymers helped clear in 2025. Rachel and Kash, who had done bashing in the nearby locations the previous year, were astonished by how much the place had changed. It was so hard to find any balsam - that might have felt unsatisfying to the bashers, but at the same time, it was proof that the strategy of fighting the invasive plant was working very well. Meanwhile, Sevan and Jo went downstream and found equally low numbers of balsam. With such slim pickings, part of the team - Ash and Amy - were redirected to litter picking, as rubbish in the river seemed way more abundant than the Himalayan invader.

The whole party came together, and regrouped after 90 minutes, as it was nearly impossible to spot any more balsam - the last year’s teams did so well! Resourceful Ben, having spotted “accessible rubbish”, proposed to GoodGymers to spend the last 30 minutes of the session on a litter blitz in the shallow part of the River Brent. The GoodGymers agreed, and in a very short time, retrieved a bag of rubbish each, and hauled some soaked, flytipped duvets - what an impressive and disgusting find!

As the area has mostly recovered from balsam invasion, CURB is now planning to use its budget to buy native plants to plant in selected areas once the balsam has been eliminated. Watch this space for the future sessions with them.

On Saturday morning at 9am, a knock on the door took Mr P - known to his friends as Mr J - by surprise. The gentleman was awaiting his carer's visit and was convinced his gardening helpers would not arrive before noon. Undeterred by the change of plans, Mr J got ready and welcomed two GoodGymers who had visited him a couple of times before.

"That's Kash and Stephan!"
"It's Sevan."
"Right!

While Sevan, whom Mr J couldn't help but call Stephan, went to fetch the tools from the lockup, Mr J told Kash about what "The Other Steph" had done during the last GoodGym visit in the front garden: planting strawberries and roses.

With planting sorted at the right time of the season, the next chapter of Mr J's Peace Garden story was all about rediscovering the fence separating the back garden from a grassy meadow. The fence wasn't visible under a cover of ivy and brambles, but the height of the weeds suggested there must have been something underneath.

While Sevan and Kash chopped away the invasive plants, Mr J sat down in the garden and read them aloud "J's Garden", a poem written by his friend, praising the enchanted oasis, filled with vegetables, fruit trees and a variety of recycled household items - painted, reworked and arranged in creative ways. Those objects, such as different parts of a bed used as fence panels and a gate, were still adorning the Greenford's Peace Garden, only hidden under vegetation.

Mr J, sitting on his garden bench, read the GoodGymers some other material he felt was worth sharing: a Peace Prayer and Serenity Prayer - the latter sounding very familiar to Sevan and Kash:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

”I cannot stop all the wars in the world, but I can create my Peace Garden here.” - Mr J.

With the problematic overgrown corner cleared, the compost bin filled with cuttings, and five bags of garden waste moved to the front of the house, the GoodGymers were done with their first task of the day. Additionally, Kash filled the bird feeders and hung them in front of Mr J's bedroom window so that he could watch the birds from his bed.

Sevan and Kash wished Mr J a great rest of the day and a happy birthday - a celebration with friends, which was coming soon - then they ran East for their next task.

“Bring me all the greens you can!”
Said Mr G, a big cabbage fan.
So I bought him some kale,
Sweet cabbage on sale,
And broccoli, then home I ran.