It was another rainy day in Reading, so thankfully our task was indoors! Three GoodGymers helped at Reading Repair Cafe; booking in clients, allocating repairs to the experts and learning along the way!

Zelie quickly became a pro at getting clients booked in and making sure they understood the repair cafe rules.

During the session, 18 items were brought in, including a couple of vacuums, a sewing machine from Reading's Library of Things, a bag for mending, a pan, a couple of broken toasters and kettles and a few tables too!

Sevan, joining us from GoodGym Ealing, even got stuck in with trying to install Linux on a laptop, however the laptop wasn't up to the job today.

While not everything could be fixed this afternoon, 59kg of waste was prevented and we saved the CO2 equivalent of growing 6 trees, for 10 years!

After a short break from the constant downpur on Saturday, the havy rain was back on Sunday morning, bringing plenty of puddles and mud to Pitshanger junior parkrun course. The weather wasn't without impact on the turnout as only 30 young runners showed up and completed the course despite miserable conditions - well done to all of them!

Among three GoodGymers who helped out at the event, was Maria, who came prepared with an umbrella, with which she famously ran to the marshal post number 3. Sevan was guarding the marshal position number 1 and witnessed karma in action when one of top three runners decided to cut the corner and slid on the muddy patch. Kash came into the most contact with the puddles, running the course with the children as the tail walker.

Maria, apart from being an umbrella runner, came to fame, donning the 50 good deeds rosette and the Wonder Woman headband, and bringing her usual upbeat self to the otherwise gloomy day. Well done Maria - onto the next 50 good deeds!

A magic carpet job was not what Kash and Sevan expected when arriving at Ms C's for her now weekly mission. There was a roll of carpet in the bedroom that Ms C wanted on her living room floor to keep the room warmer. The problem was that the living room floor was covered with her belongings (yet to be decluttered), so it would need an impressive magic trick to get the carpet down. Together, they decided that it wasn't a realistic task to complete, so they moved on to other things.

For Ms C's second priority, Kash was banished to squeeze items that Ms C wanted to keep into the storage cupboards in the kitchen, or maybe it was a black hole as it kept gobbling up more and items. More than it should be able to hold. Kash spent much effort trying to convince Ms C to give things away that she shouldn't need.

"What's that?" Ms C
"That's a dart board" - Kash
"Do you play darts?" - Ms C
"I used to have a board"
"Do you play darts?" - Kash
"No. I just liked the look of it at the time" - Ms C
"Maybe you can donate it to the charity shop?" - Kash
"No, I want to give it to someone who really loves it." - Ms C

...and so it too went into the black hole. Maybe in the future Ms C will find a darts player who doesn't have their own board and it'll find its true home. Other exotic and unusual items made their way to the cupoboard, including a tortoise shaped lamp, a 1.5m long fake snake and Ms C's Halloween mask collection 👹.

As organising the cupboard was a 1 person job, Sevan worked nearby to fix Ms C's heated airer. It had been put together badly, so couldn't be unfolded. After a bit of cursing at Black and Decker's product design that made no sense to Sevan, he managed to get it into a usable state, then went on a grocery dash to the corner shop at the end of the road.

As Kash struggled to get the black hole to consume any more of Ms C's things, Ms C confessed.

"I'm a hoarder, but when I have that extra [storage] space outside, you won't think so." - Ms C

Sevan wasn't sure that having more storage space would necessarily help with that. Kash tried to explain the benefits of minimalism with limited success.

"When you're finished with me, I'll be a minimalist too" - Ms C
"It's like an addiction. You need to want to become a minimalist" - Sevan
"Oh, yes. I'm really quiet a neat person" - Ms C

There was something different to round off the mission. Ms C's garden was the location of Kash and Sevan's first mission together and the went to the garden again to feed the local birds. Sevan filled a cage with fat balls and Kash filled a dish with dried grub worms, making Ms C and the local avian population very happy.

Skirting Ealing’s lower borders, the Grand Union Canal leisurely bends this way and that – like a discarded piece of Brit-boiled spaghetti, perhaps, or a generous dollop of blueberry jam dribbled onto the edge of a green Ealing-sized, Ealing-shaped plate. For sure, it’ll eventually deliver its watery wares to the Thames, but it’s got no deadline and it knows it. However, as it glides blithely past Hanwell, it passes a series of orchards where things are more urgent. The space was reclaimed from its gritty industrial aftermath in 2017 and is now used to grow fruit trees, an initiative started by Hanwell and Norwood Green Orchard Trail (HANGOT, and no, we can’t think how to get the ‘U’ in there either). But the trees grew a little too enthusiastically last year, threatening the local ecosphere with something of a hug of death. They need cutting back, and the soil’s nutrients could use a boost. So HANGOT teamed up with GoodGym’s Ealing division to make that happen.

Lead by Sevan, GoodGym offered help in the form of twelve keen folks (“A raker’s dozen”, Sevan quipped), each keen to grab a shovel, a wheelbarrow, secateurs or, indeed, a rake. Steph and Harvey were amongst a group focused on defibrillating the soil back into life with shovels and a pile of mulch the size of a small hill. “This is beautiful mulch. The things that GoodGym teaches you…” mentioned Harvey, just in case you assumed mulch was anything other than oversized soggy wooden breakfast cereal. The pile was distributed and the trees were grateful for it.

Time for surgery via secateurs. While Team Mulch were busy wheelbarrowing their chunks of Soggy Brown Wet, Max and Sevan assisted the HANGOT volunteers busy chewing away the tree’s overgrown branches. (Though with shears, not teeth. HANGOT has no giraffes on their team…yet.) Both, however, were mindful of the brutally impressive two inch thorns that hedgehogged off the branches. “Whoever said ‘Nature is kind’ never had to deal with it repeatedly stabbing you in the hand”, Max murmured. (Sevan offered him a pair of spare protective gloves, and all was well.) The resulting bundles were piled into wheelbarrows and moved to areas that West London fauna consider impressive real estate. With the area cleared and primed for a fresh fruit crop destined for the Nutri-bullets of health-conscious locals, we moved onto the piggeries.

Spoiler: there were no pigs. Or a wolf. Or houses built from straw or brick, though there were plenty of sticks had any construction-inclined swines been available. In truth, it was more of the same here – but towards the west end of the enclosure, the overgrowth took on an almost jungle-like tone. So as we continued our operation (Mulch, mulch, mulch. Dig, dig, dig. Thorn, in, hand, ow.) we moved all the chopped-off wooden goodness to this natural biodiversity sanctum. And in the mild sun of a pleasantly warm February, it felt positively glorious.

With the work wrapped up, we went on our way to a local coffee shop at a gentle walking pace not unlike that of the Grand Union Canal itself. “We couldn’t have done it without you,” assured HANGOT volunteer Magda. Which gave us a final reason why doing good really can feel it, too.

The GoodGymers who ran last night from Ealing Broadway to Acton were wet in seconds after leaving the covers of Spring Bridge Mews. True or false? False. They had been soaked long before meeting at the starting point.

Yes, that group run was certainly in the "wet one" category, and yes, the weather was less than ideal for a leafletting activity. Fortunately, shortly after Sevan, Steph, and Kash arrived in Acton and met Maria with an umbrella, the rain eased, and the four were able to kick off the task.

On behalf of Action West London, we've been walking around Acton to post flyers about another round of the Movement on the Mount, a free community exercise programme helping women overcome barriers to being active through weekly fitness sessions at St Mary’s Church Hall. The registrations for next Movement on the Mount were about to close in less than a week, so the deadline was tight to get the word out.

We hit the streets North of Springfield Gardens. Some were a good fit for the target audience (Essex Rd, Hereford Rd, Shalimar Gardens), others not so much (Creswick Road, Pierrepoint Rd, Lynton Rd, with big houses and flats with no outside postboxes).

By the end of the task, our leaflet envelopes were empty and our minds full of hope that women who may face challenges accessing exercise, such as low confidence, caring responsibilities, limited income, or their cultural background, will find their way to the Mount.

According to Steph's stats, each of us walked 3.33km during the task - that's halfway to beast mode, if you know what I mean!

Next week we're heading towards Northfields and Blondin Park for a run, a woodchipping task, and most importantly, hot chocolate! Sign up now!

"Do you have a bucket?" - Mrs C

...was not what Kash and Sevan wanted to hear from a beneficiary at the start of a mission to clean Mrs C's windows. Thankfully, Mrs C was not as unprepared as they initially feared. There was a mop bucket, some cleaning cloths and a brand new step ladder and window cleaning pole. Mrs C had a large bottle of Fairy Liquid and the dregs of some white wine vinegar too. Sevan mixed them together with warm water and made some good-enough-for-the job window washing liquid while Kash put the window washing pole together.

Inevitably, Kash and Sevan got wet. Sometimes in expected ways, like water dribbling down their sleeves as they reached up to clean the windows. Other times, they were surprised, like when they tried to rinse the mop bucket with the garden hose that was strung over a window. The bucket stayed dry and instead, they turned on a water feature that sprayed everywhere, giving the window and the GoodGymers a nice a shower.

Once they had everything prepared, Kash and Sevan breezed through cleaning Mrs C's traditional wooden sash windows. They speedily worked through the panes in the back garden and back door, plus the bay window in front, cleaning the frames and sills too. The squeegee wasn't great, leaving a few streaks, but Mrs C was really pleased and could see the difference immediately.

"I can see the shine in the kitchen! ✨" - Mrs C

A lot of the chat before Acton Junior parkrun this morning was around the Winter Olympics. Who's seen the opening ceremony? Who'd been firing themselves down an ice flume on a tea tray at 120kmph? Who had the most impressive or least practical outfits at the opening ceremony? Had the GoodGym team been in training for today's parkrun?

"Timekeepers, are you ready?" - Run Director
"Yes, my thumbs are ready."
"They've been in training."
"They're at peak performance, ready to record times!" - Sevan

The rest of the team were ready too, with gold standard marshalling by Maria, Harvey, Chris and Steph. Lightening fast barcode scanning by Joanna... and dependably slow tail walking by Kash.

There weren't any 120kmph performances today and thankfully no ice either, so the 61 finishers made it safely around the track. The first finisher recorded a more sedate, yet still impressive 14.52kmph (or 8:15).