Two Ealing GoodGymers, Sevan and Kash, were crossing borders again this Saturday afternoon, supporting GoodGym Hounslow for the second weekend in a row. After proving their worth by cutting trees with a bread knife, the duo felt unstoppable and ran 5km further west to test their skills against Ms H's patio.

Ms H's sister, Ms K, welcomed the two and offered them ice-cold water. What a relief after a run in the blazing sun! Ms K was the carer of her two sisters, both of whom were in poor health. Ms K's age and caring responsibilities left her without energy or time to tackle the back and front gardens of Ms H's house. That's why we have GoodGymers in this world!

The patio in the back garden was the priority, so Sevan and Kash took the challenge to clear all of the weeds in sight and sweep the mess into waste bags. Most of the weeds were easily pulled from between the slabs, except thistles and dandelions that needed a little bit of convincing to let go - a pair of shears was the best argument! The GoodGymers uncovered a colony of bindweed at the far end and dealt with it with utmost delight.

Ninety minutes was enough to finish the transformation of the back garden. The spectacular result surprised even Sevan and Kash themselves! Ms K then introduced the GoodGymers to her sisters, Ms H and Ms M. All three were very grateful for help and hoped to see the GoodGym team again (maybe to help with the front garden?).

Isleworth was the location of K&S Gardeners' first mission of the day. On arrival, it looked fairly simple as the grass in the small front garden needed mowing. K's sharp eyes identified some more jobs that needed attention, spotting some young trees growing on the boundary between the street and garden.

While K took control of the lawnmower - with upside down controls - and started the main task, S was ready to go to cut the trees and asked for some tools to use. While he waited for some secateurs or loppers to appear, Miss R's granddaughter appeared at the door and took an interest in the strangers, offering them her Fruit Shoot.

When Miss R's daughter came back with tools and black bags, she didn't bring loppers, nor a pair of secateurs. Instead, she handed S a bread knife. She explained it by saying that the granddaughter was getting too curious about the chopping tools, so the bread knife was safer all round 🤷‍♂️. The granddaughter asked why the strangers were allowed to use the knife and she wasn't and was told it was because "aunty and uncle" were older than her youthful 21 months 😂.

GoodGym breeds resourcefulness and and this was another one of those occasions. The GoodGymers had never use a bread knife to cut, well, anything as part of a mission. After finding the right technique, the knife was actually pretty good at cutting through the little saplings, struggling with anything more heavy duty. It also did a great job of slicing through the wall of tall grass growing around the wire fence and at edging the lawn.

With 2 very different tools, the pair made a big impact. Six trees were discovered and chopped, plus the grass was neatly trimmed, meaning that Miss R didn't need to worry about her front garden for a while.

After a couple of months break, GoodGym Ealing were back at the wonderful London Transport Museum Depot in Acton to partner with All Aboard Club. Overlooking the full size tube trains and buses, the task as always was to build a unique and giant train set for autistic and SEN children.

As usual, everyone started building their own vision, then tried to work out how to connect it to everyone else's pieces of track. Michelle and Sevan started working on neighbouring towns, so had the "how on earth do we connect these?" problem early on, before going on to create and resolve chaos in other parts of the train network.

One of the regular volunteers had grand designs for his track and he wasn't afraid of telling people about them. He told Sevan, then other volunteers how his 4 parallel stretches of track would branch off and merge together with other parts, leading to task owner Richard to say:

"Less talk, more build" - Richard

...and so he did, turning what was in his mind into blue plastic art.

Once set up, the All Aboard Club attendees almost arrived on time, which is rare as they're so excited to get to play with the trains. They were only 5 minutes early today. Another surprise was that they didn't immediately start to rip up and change the lovingly created track. Maybe the troublemakers are away this month 😂.

If you'd like to become a big child for an hour, you can join us next month to help All Aboard Club get their big train set ready at the London Transport Museum Depot. Sign up here for the 12th of July.

You might have heard in the past that Thursday is the new Friday, but in Ealing, Thursday is the new Tuesday! This week, we trialled a non-Tuesday evening group run to give people with schedules different from our regular group a chance to get fit while doing good.

After a brief warm-up - as the evening felt nice and summery - Sevan led a group of four runners 1 km south of Ealing Broadway towards St Mary's Church. Although the run was short, two GoodGymers took an extra challenge: running with laptops in their bags, coming straight from work! Among them was a new joiner: Ayesha. Welcome to GoodGym, Ayesha!

At the destination, GoodGymers Sevan, Ayesha, Steph Ducat and Kash met Cliff, a volunteer passionate about keeping the church garden in shape. That job became a challenge when the weeds shot up in the spring after a group of garden volunteers shrunk earlier in the year. Cliff was determined to make the garden presentable for the arrival of the new vicar in early August. He chipped away on that task every now and then on free evenings and weekends, but the weeds were a formidable army that kept coming back.

Cliff decided on a section to be cleared today and handed our team forks, adzes and a mattock. The overgrown surface was not a small one, so we got right into the task. Cliff was surprised to discover that a heap of weeds he had cleared earlier has moved. Was that a ghost from the cemetery in the garden? After closer examination, we revealed that the pile of garden waste was concealing a lime bike! Hiding a lime bike in your garden is naughty - but disguising it in a graveyard under a heap of weeds is a totally different level of mischief! Interestingly, just a few minutes after the bike was freed, it disappeared, taken by someone in need of a ride. It was reassuring to know that the lime bike was alive and not ready to end up buried in the graveyard.

We worked away, listening to Cliff's stories about people camping in the church garden and even setting a fire to heat up dinner packed in a plastic container. A charred log we saw was proof it was not some tall tale at all.

In an hour, we made impressive progress, finishing our section and uncovering the path to the compost heap. Ayesha learnt some new skills by trying out different tools. The Thursday group run was a success, and we are already looking forward to another session at St Mary's to help the community make the best impression on the new vicar!