Shopping for Mr K, as usual featuring that devilishly delicious foodstuff, cheddar cheese

Our job last night was back at a local favourite, a school we’ve visited more times than we can. As Tish pointed out, the place is looking really tidied up these days — and it’s not just magic. We’ve definitely left our muddy trainer-shaped mark over the years.

There was bit of a challenge to overcome to start — the caretaker had unfortunately forgotten to tool us up, but we soldiered on, armed with sheer determination and upper body strength.

Our main mission: finish the rockery we’ve been building in the carpark. As Maxime said, the end was in sight, and completing it would give us a proper sense of satisfaction. Armed with only two wheelbarrows — one of which moonlights as a haunted violin — we did what we do best: powered through with teamwork, elbow grease, and a slightly off-beat squeak.

And as always, no session is complete without uncovering some mysterious buried treasure. Previous finds have included Jon's old glove and a perfectly serviceable bike. This time? A tiny plastic duck, now our unofficial mascot.

We rounded things off with some litter picking and a spot of weeding, then it was time for a quick circuit session: cardio to get the heart racing, strength moves to build muscles, and enough lunges to trouble the glutes and hammies.

Before we sign off — a massive GOOD LUCK to all the GoodGym runners taking on the London Marathon this weekend. Go Lucy! 🏃‍♀️💨 If you fancy cheering her (and the rest of the runners) on, you can sign up to join the cheer squad here

See you next week for more fun, fitness, and possibly another random duck. 🦆✨ In the meantime, don't forget that we have a lovely task restoring the natural river habitat on Sunday, if you're free sign up here for a task with a big impact.

I don't do races - unless they are action movie-class pursuits - like the one today!

It started like any other shopping mission. I had some free time on Friday's bank holiday, so I visited Mr K of Chiswick, who is always very fond of the young people from GoodGym and, recently, Helping Hands, who come to support him. If Mr K was slightly disappointed I was not JP, whom he'd been expecting (although a post-it note on his corkboard had my name down), he didn't show it at all.

Mr K handed me a grocery list with only 5 items, cash, a shopping bag and, of course, his Nectar card.

Sainsbury's was pretty busy on Good Friday, but there was no queue at the checkout. It was at the supermarket's exit where I met my rival: Mr Scooter. Ready, steady, go! We set off with our Sainsbury's branded bags towards the crossing by the Gunnersbury station, not even knowing we'd be racing each other. Wheels against legs, electric motor versus a mighty engine powered by organic compounds.

The competition was about tactics: navigating narrow shop exits, traffic lights and bulging tree roots distorting the pavement. Mr Scooter had the advantage of speed since I was walking, not running, but I could take shortcuts Mr Scooter could not use, which was not good news for the accessibility in the area. Before the pavement got really rough, we went head-to-head, taking different routes to avoid obstacles. At some point, I took the lead and lost Mr Scooter from sight. That made me feel grateful for being able-bodied and, at the same time, bad about the challenges people on mobility scooters go through. Then, suddenly, Mr Scooter appeared on the other side of the road, cruising on the even pavement like a swan on the surface of a lake. He was going for the gold medal! He reached the crossing at the Gunnersbury station and turned toward Chiswick Park. Well done, Mr Scooter. Well done, Chiswick.

Mr K got his groceries soon after and thought I was pretty fast. Well done, silver medallist Kash.

There was a late change of plan for the GoodGym Hounslow gang tonight. Not only were we Ana-less, as she was off celebrating her birthday (the cheek of it), but our task at Chiswick House had been cancelled. Fortunately, Romina from Cultivate London had a GoodGym shaped task lined up at Acton Junior School…

… And the task turned up to be a load of cr#p!

Quite literally - Romina had a fresh delivery of horse manure delivered from our friends at the Ealing Riding School, and our job for the evening was to shovel the sh#t from the middle of the playground where it had been dumped, into sacks to be moved and used in the local community gardens.

‘Man-ure going a good job’

Armed with shovels, forks, buckets and sacks, we got stuck into that pile of poop, showed that team work can make the dream work, even if the task is a bit sh#tty! We manure-vered the mound, we dung deep and we cleared the school’s stools.

When Poo become One

*I need some gloves like I’ve never needed gloves before… * and probably a good shower when I get home. We somehow did a crap-solutely great job of moving all the poop from its pile into neat sacks of sh#t instead. Even with all the horsing around going on, Romina was amazed that we had finished the task. Number two? We were definitely her number ones here!

After a round of high fives and a ‘stank poo thank you’ later, Chris led the runners back to the pub for a well deserved hand wash, and some brownies courtesy of Will.

Poo-tiful work tonight Gang, well dung all of you, and a Happy-not-crappy birthday to our lovely Ana!

This report was written for you by Poo-cy Hill.

For their last mission of the day, Sevan and Kash walked 10 minutes from their previous task in Isleworth. It doesn't sound too epic, does it? Let's start again.

Sevan and Kash, following the Ancient Greece-related theme of the Saturday morning community mission, visited Mrs H, who prepared for them the Twelve Labours of Hercules. Well, there were only two labours, but not the kind you do every week in your garden. The first one was trimming rose bushes to Mrs H's height, and the second: cutting down a small apple tree. The small tree was 4-5 metres high and had four trunks. Mrs H pointed at a large coniferous tree at the back to put questioning the size of the apple tree into perspective.

Sevan knew that Kash secretly fantasised about being a tree surgeon, so he grabbed a pair of secateurs and got stuck into pruning the rose bushes and invaders growing inside the hedge in Mrs H's back garden. Kash's plan of taking down the apple tree entangled lopping the smaller branches she could reach, and then sawing the thicker ones and eventually the trunks. Both Kash and Sevan anticipated that the job would be time-consuming, especially if they were expected to deal with the timber. And they were!

Mrs H confessed she had booked a 9 am slot in the Feltham recycling centre the next day. She was hoping to pack the small tree into her small car and drive to dispose of it on Sunday. She was very worried at the thought that she wouldn't be able to drop anything at the centre the following day and would lose all credibility with the council.

The GoodGymers had been on the task for nearly 90 minutes with good results. Kash had carefully taken down all the apple tree branches, even the 3-metre ones that could have damaged the neighbour's fence if not handled with caution. Sevan managed to chop down one of the four trunks. It was a moment of choice: spend time chopping down the remaining tree trunks so that the tree would become history or focus on packing the wood for transport to the recycling centre. It would have been awesome to be able to say "we chopped down a not-so-small tree in a single mission" - but not so awesome for Mrs H.

Sevan and Kash said no to being proud and focussed on what they saw as the most valuable: sawing and lopping already cut tree parts in preparation for Mrs H's trip to Feltham the following day. They filled a sturdy bag with the largest branches and shoved if into the car's trunk. The garden waste bin was full of smaller twigs too. After two hours on the task, the GoodGymers left behind only the small branches that Mrs H could collect in her own time, without compromising the visit to the recycling centre.

The last challenge was negotiation with Mrs H who had baked a cake on Friday and wanted to give it to the GoodGymers as a thank you. Such a lovely gesture! It would have been difficult to run 6 km back home with the whole cake, so the compromise was to take half of it between Sevan and Kash. The other half of the cake and the unfinished business with the apple tree trunks will have to wait for other GoodGym daredevils!

Ms B was excited to have GoodGym visit her for the first time. She asked Kash and Sevan to dig out one specific plant from her flower beds and to rehome some of it in a large flower pot.

Kash got stuck in to digging out the plant in question whose roots had all woven together under the surface. Sevan was filling the big pot with compost and had a bit of a surprise when he saw the plant roots. They were at right angles to the stem, then shot off in all different directions, making it hard to plant one next to another. Eventually he figured it out as Kash finished up clearing the first flower bed.

While Kash dealt with flower bed 2, Sevan went on a mini adventure to find the garden waste bin. "Out the back gate, around the corner and next to a white car", apparently. Sevan found a white mini, but no bin. He kept going and figured out that the white car and the bin that were described were actually sitting in front of Ms B's front door 🤦‍♂️.

Back in the garden, Kash had removed some dead stems and threaded ivy though Ms B's garden arch. That was more than Ms B had planned for the afternoon, so she was very appreciative of the help.

Finally, Sevan asked what the plants that they were (re)moving were called. Helianthus, replied Ms B. Sevan looked it up later and they're from the sunflower family 🌻 although, they definitely weren't the tall type that we normally think of.