On Sunday afternoon, Sevan and Kash ran 8 km from Ealing to a familiar location in Hounslow. In the morning, they had packed rain jackets, although sunglasses would have been more useful, as the sun was generous enough to show its face in the second part of the day.

The GoodGymers were visiting Miss S, for whom they had battled brambles at least twice in the past. Sadly, they wouldn’t see the lady this time, as she had been taken to the hospital. The mission was still going ahead, as Miss S’s friend had left the garden gate unlocked and provided instructions on how to find the tools.

When Sevan and Kash entered the backyard and first located the outdoor loo (critical to finding the tool store), another friend of Miss S opened the door of the beneficiary's house. The look on her face was saying: “Why on earth are you breaking into a privy?” The loo-glars explained the situation and found out that this friend of Miss S had only just arrived back home and had no clue about the arrangements with GoodGym. Sevan and Kash must have looked trustworthy, as they quickly gained the friend’s trust and access to the garden. Not only that - the friend offered them access to the house, but they politely refused, as they had everything they needed in the garden.

The two knew the drill, so they spent the next 90 minutes chopping brambles, lopping overgrown tree branches, and squeezing everything into the poor garden waste bin. Kash had no mercy for the trimmings and eventually jumped into the bin to compress everything - and that method, once again, has proved super effective.

After the mission, the garden looked much more under control. Hopefully, that was one less thing off Miss S’s plate while she was recovering in the hospital. The GoodGymers were pleased that it was still bright and dry outside when they finished the task. So pleased indeed that Kash decided to walk 6 km back home and make the most of the sunlight. She told the story of the loo heist to her voice recorder while walking - what you’ve just read is its transcript.

Today's Care4Calais session saw the 2-2 theme from the earlier Pitshanger Junior parkrun continue, with the team's skirts staying on through this session too. There was no other fancy dress on display as the start of the task was all business.

Boxes of school uniforms had arrived at C4C's West London base and the first task was to sort through them, getting rid of anything that was damaged or poor quality. Next, the clothes were organised by size. Instead of the child's age, which GoodGymers had used for previous school uniform tasks, the key today was the waist size as most donations were trousers. Some pairs were brand new, still with tags on and others had been to many lessons. Where helpful ex-owners had removed the size labels, as usual, the team needed to lay out the trousers to guess the waist size.

With the school uniforms bagged up, it was onto more colourful, less... grey clothing. First up were men's clothing donations where there were a lot of brands. Someone was clearly upgrading last season's Gucci/Lacoste/Givenchy for something new. Working through the women's clothes donations was fairly straight forward apart from some interesting sizing by the brands. A "medium" top that could fit 2 GoodGymers in it for example, well, that seemed like more of an (X)XL.

The final sizing issue that the team encountered was the size of the boxes in the storage room. Some were overflowing before the new donations even arrived. No matter how much Angela and Kash tried to squeeze in more jumpers or t-shirts, they wouldn't go. Admitting defeat, task owner Tamzin had to find the team some new overflow storage.

Today's session was all sorting and no pack creation because the ticket printer was on the blink, meaning that the tickets for new requests couldn't be created. Sevan had a look as the task wrapped up, pressed some buttons and like magic, the printer spat out a sheet of requests, ready for the afternoon's volunteering group to work through.

Our GoodGym gang defo got the tutu memo - the dressage was out in impressive force. Extra cudos must go to Sevan for making not one but two tutus (sorry!) and Maria for bagging a bin bag tutu!

The kids may not have got the tutu memo, probably because they don’t know what a memo is. But 50 runners got the message to show up and run round Pitshanger Park - bravo!

It wasn’t just a tutu day, it was also a marshal day, timekeeper day and tailwalker day. The latter featuring a pirouetting Stef, still quite taken by sporting his tutu.

There didn't sound like there was much to do at Mr J's flat. He'd been having trouble keeping on top of things a few months ago when he was referred for help to declutter. Since then, he'd worked through the backlog himself, leaving Kash, Sevan and Mr J wondering how GoodGym could help him. At first, Mr J directed them to a pile of clothes that could go for donation, then, he remembered that there was a "storage" room where things went to be dealt with later.

The storage room sounded promising, so Mr J asked them to organise it by putting similar things together and making it look less like everything had been dumped there. During the mission, Kash and Sevan learned than Mr J had had an adventurous life. He had a trade which he'd worked in until retirement. He also knew how to have fun in his free time.

"I've been under the water diving and above the ground paragliding."
"I love to travel too. I've been all over and I loved India the most." - Mr J

In the spare room, Mr J first introduced Kash and Sevan to a memento from someone else's travels. A pirate chest, apparently from the 1820s. The treasure inside was long gone, unfortunately, so Mr J left the pair to work through the other boxes, bags and envelopes in the room by themselves.

Kash and Sevan found all manner of things from Mr J's life, discovering that he was an intentional and unintentional collector. He had sets of stamps, coins, photos and postcards from his travels, watches and clocks, all deliberately kept. He was very keen on his timepieces. There were also old mobile phones going back to the early 2000s, ceramic pieces and old hearing aids that had just hung around. Kash found containers to group Mr J's belongings together, creating a box for paperwork, for photos, for stamps and for random other bits and bobs.

By the end of the mission Mr J's storage room had become less daunting, meaning that he could now find similar items and sort through them in his own time. Two bags of rubbish had been removed too, which was a huge help for Mr J as he'd been housebound for the last 6 months.

Who knows what an aquifer is? No, neither did Ealing GoodGymers until today's tree planting session in Cleveland Park with Letting Grow. Letting Grow's plan was to put 1,500 trees into the ground in the park as part of today's community day.

Maria arrived early to discover the muddy delights that awaited and started planting the bundle of whips she was handed. Kash, Theo, Lena and Sevan arrived later and were greeted by:

"Welcome to mudland!" - Maria

Task owner Ross had been in the park since the morning and offered the GoodGymers his own advice due to the muddiness of the ground:

"Use our gloves" - Ross
"Have you got an industrial washing machine to clean them?" - Sevan
"No. I have a very angry wife"
"She'll say, I can't believe you've muddied up the washing machine again!" - Ross

Some took Ross up on his offer, making his wife more angry. Those that didn't had their own extra washing to do after the task. The "fun" part of planting in this aquifer was that a puddle would materialise a few seconds after any hole was dug for a tree. This needed special trees - GoodGymers planted sweet chestnut and hornbeam - that could take the damp soil and a special planting technique:

1. Dig a hole
2. Put the top grass layer back in the hole upside down
3. Place the whip in
4. Fill the hole with the rest of the removed soil
5. Heel in the whip
6. Add some mulch

The second step was unusual and Ross said that it would help to keep the ground water away from the roots. The unsaid step 7 was to try and get as much mud off yourself as possible before planting the next tree. Some of the team had more success than others in staying clean and you can play "spot who had the most fun" with the group photo.

Everyone did an amazing job in challenging conditions, with Maria taking the award for champion tree planter 🏆. There were many people from the local area who'd come along to the community day too, so we and they will see in a few months how the whips are getting on in their own private swimming pools.

Nine GoodGymers who visited Western Road on a cloudy Saturday morning were in their element the moment they jumped into action. And the element of the day was water. Somehow, miraculously, it didn't rain in the morning - that, obviously, had to happen at some point. It was the water tanks that served as the theme for the February session at the urban garden.

Firstly, a heavy tank had to be emptied of water and a sludge-like mess, then wheeled on a trolley to a different part of the garden. Secondly, two other water tanks - 1000-litre monsters each - were waiting to be placed in more suitable locations. Our job was to create those appropriate places for them: one high and one low. While Sophie and Afshin were digging a wide hole for one tank, Sevan and Steph were using the dirt extracted by them to build a platform for the other container.

A side quest, not related to water, had Danny, Kash and Steph moving woodchip to a newly planted section of the native hedging, to be raked by Kat and Iram. The fun part? There were only two wheelbarrows, one of them undergoing surgery at the beginning of the session. Once the barrow got a new (puncture-proof!) wheel installed, it got captured by Afshin, who had to move the soil for Sevan, who was building the water tank podium. The woodchippers ended up, again, with a single wheelbarrow between them, but quickly got creative and found some buckets to reduce the need for wheeled transportation.

Lena joined a team (partially including members of Let's Go Southall) whose job was to take down a mound of soil and use the material to even the ground around the polytunnel. And guess which tool was most useful to move the soil? Yes, that extra task meant even more competition for the wheelbarrows!

We managed to do the jobs thanks to teamwork and creativity, then found some time to enjoy fruit and hot and cold drinks in the polytunnel. White strawberries captured the most attention as a curiosity, unseen before by most Ealing GoodGymers.