Sevan and Kash were back for another instalment - or shall I say installation - at Ms K's in Acton, after last week's battle against a wardrobe. Sevan, confident about their still-fresh experience in IKEA wardrobe assembly, started looking ahead, already thinking about starting the bed building, after they would complete the second wardrobe, similar to the one they had built previously. Too soon!

As the GoodGymers hadn't completed all the inside features of the first wardrobe, they spent almost half an hour building its drawers. Why did it take so long? The instructions weren't provided in the pack, so the final look of the drawer and the steps to make it happen had to be figured out. Thankfully, Sevan was pretty good at that.

Armed with a memory of the previous flatpack building session, Sevan and Kash quickly assembled the identical case of the second wardrobe, happy that all the parts fitted together right away this time. While Ms K entertained the GoodGymers with her stories about her accounting assistance and math tutoring she had offered in the past, the duo got busy building the shelves for the wardrobe number two.

Everything was going smoothly until they discovered that the last shelf turned out uneven. Sevan admitted he hadn't done his maths right when calculating the position of the hole where he was supposed to put the screws (8+9=16?), while Kash enthusiastically followed his mistake and started screwing in the fixings without double-checking the assumptions. Ooops - a bit of a blunder in front of such a math buff as Ms K!

Despite the slip-up, the GoodGymers promptly corrected the error, and soon two wardrobes stood next to each other with shelving and drawers ready to put clothes in! The doors were still missing, but the practical Ms K was happy with the outcome, knowing it enabled her to start transferring her outfits temporarily kept in the living room into her new bedroom.

A lighter than usual task at Care4Calais today. Task owner Tamzin gave everyone an early finish as it was Xmas and also for good behaviour through the year. There was still plenty of work to do though and packages to prepare for recipients who are experiencing their first UK winter.

The legend that is Santa had delivered a big batch of padded jackets to Care4Calais. Just what was needed to keep everyone warm during the current spell of cold weather. Steph, Maria, Kash and Sevan opened half finished packages and squeezed jackets into each one. Lesser known fantasy figures then came to help the GoodGymers as Shoe Fairies delivered boxes of trainers, which is exactly what the next batch of requests needed.

Other legendary occurrences during the task included Kash exclaiming that she'd "never been so tall" as she carried a box on her head which hit the ceiling. Later, Tamzin told Steph and Sevan to "finish him off". A reference to fixing a poorly picked package for a child still needing a school bag, not a command to take them out!

Normal service will be resumed in January when we'll be back helping Care4Calais. Depending on your definition of "normal", that could be just as fantastical and amusing as today's session.

After a sonic-speed run to volunteer at the junior parkrun, Steph and Kash swapped their morning coffee (well, Kash did - Steph already had time for two of them!) for a walk to a mission in East Acton.

They were off to help Miss G tackle her neglected front and back gardens to make a positive impact on her mental health. The back garden was a priority, with brambles all over, and a massive fridge and some chairs thrown in the middle.

Seating on the thrones of thorns didn't seem like a good impact on anyone's wellbeing or backsides, so Steph removed the chairs, then put on his mighty bramble gloves to pack away the spiky cuttings Kash was about to produce. Kash grabbed the only pair of shears the two had found at the time and started chopping.

The onslaught on the brambles uncovered a mower, a boomerang (?), a fridge that could fit a human or two (no Harrison Ford found inside) and the only plant that was supposed to grow in the garden. The GoodGymers then raked all the cuttings and bagged them into black sacks.

The back garden looked transformed, and the pair still had half an hour to spare. Steph and Kash faced a big decision: should they make a visible difference in the front garden now, or make the transformation at the back more sustainable? You see, the brambles might have been cut to the ground, but their roots remained, which guaranteed new growth over the warmer months. The GoodGymers refused the temptation of easy front garden wins and opted for doing one job properly. They stayed in the back garden and dug out all the bramble roots they could reach.

Miss G came out to see the result of their 90-minute exploits and was utterly shocked by the change.

Gosh! It looks like a different place! - Miss G.

She couldn't believe what a duo of dedicated GoodGymers could achieve in such a short time and said "gosh!" and "thank you" at least ten times more. Steph and Kash made Miss G very happy, but also left some fun for another GoodGym team to tackle the front garden, hoping that their successors would spend the following mission doing an equally proper job as they had strived to do!

Chilly Sunday morning and yes children and volunteers went out for a Junior parkrun. As the goodgmyers were early, they helped Jane setup the course. Signs were given and sone arrows were the wrong way, then a volunteer suggested to have the funnel the other way. Could we have an original park run today and have it going the other way round? Backwards running too? That would be fun and confusing for all. We decided not to go for the backwards run but for the original way of running and swapped the arrows tk the corext way. 25 Juniors collected tokens from Alan. Kash was then barcode scanning. During this time, Maria, Harveyand Steph Ducatwere making sure the children were running to correct way and also giving loads of high 5's. Then Chikako followed the last runner as she was tail walking with her daughter.

3 goodgymers met on a cold windy morning in front of Ealing Broadway Station to have a chatty but speed run to Acton Junior parkrun. We did a small loop in the park to end up doing 3.5km. Sonic speed and we were there before any volunteers. in the distance, we noticed Jane, todays ru director so we had plenty of time to help her setup for parkrun

As Kash and Sevan removed their shoes, Ms L told them to keep them on as her cats might have left "presents" on the floor. The pair wondered how bad it could be? They'd surely be able to see and dodge any landmines. It made sense for Ms L to give the warning though as she was visually impaired. That's why she'd asked GoodGym to help her sort and pack her belongings ahead of an upcoming home move.

Everything looked well prepared with Ms L's belongings in bags and boxes. This apparent readiness to move hid a lot of work as Ms L had only been able to group together similar types of items, like clothes. The GoodGymers were needed to help identify what each specific item was, for example describing the type, pattern or brand of a piece of clothing to categorise it and help Ms L decide if she wanted to keep in. There were also vintage clothing items in Ms L's collection that she wanted to sell rather than donate as part of downsizing and decluttering.

Ms L's 3 long haired 😺😼😸 also had a keen interest in what was each bag, so Ms L, Kash and Sevan had to keep shooing them away to not get their gorgeous fur on everything. The cats were particularly keen on vintage clothes and jewellery and, as 2 of them were named after glamorous 1960's models, that made total sense. Eventually, the containers with clothes in them were sealed up to keep them safe from the fur and the claws.

Of less interest to the furry friends (the cats, not Kash and Sevan) was a lot of photography equipment that Sevan described to Ms L, some books and some gruesome looking figurines with skeletal faces and parts of their skulls missing. Only later did the pair figure out that they were a scary set of chess pieces!

As it turned out, there wasn't anything on the floor to put the GoodGymers' socks in danger and all the cats, apart from being a bit mischievous, were well behaved and very loveable. It was hard to leave the cats at the end of the mission, but some donations were ready to drop off at a local charity shop. A return visit may have to be arranged to get some more kitty time 😻.

Ms G was a keen gardener, constantly looking for ways to improve her skills, taking gardening and art courses to make her backyard look stunning. Unfortunately, the soil in her garden wasn't great. The easiest alternative was to invest in potted plants.

When Sevan and Kash entered Ms G's kitchen, they had a feeling as if they were visiting a greenhouse in Kew Gardens, although they were in Stoke Newington. The kitchen was full of baby aloe vera plants. There were also some unusual specimens like the leaf of life from Jamaica. All that greenery was staying indoors for the winter, but the plants started to outgrow their small pots and needed to be moved outside for repotting.

Sevan and Kash descended to the back garden through steep, spiral stairs, carrying small pots with plants, and found four large pots and copious amounts of soil downstairs. Together with Ms G, they quickly transferred the aloe vera and the leaf of life to the large pots, then carried them back to Ms G's own "Temperate House". Having extra time, they did some speed weeding and sweeping of the paved area in the back garden.

Ms G was grateful for the help and shared with the GoodGymers that she'd been thinking about a larger-scale project than her plant pots: raised beds. Sevan and Kash didn't know whether building raised beds could become a GoodGym mission, but if it did, it would have been an epic one!