Pierre of the Transition Ilford Forest Garden team requested GG presence at the Garden so he could appraise us of what is new there and enlist our help. Four of us made our way over to the Garden post parkrun.

Sadly the hot summer and difficulty watering has meant a lot of last years planting didn't go as planned. It is hoped that we might be able to help in future.

In the meantime we were able to assist in taming some of the more robust overgrowth by pulling up some grass and weeds near the fences. James and Katherine cut back a lot of tiny saplings that would stop the existing trees from thriving with Linda piling up the cuttings and Ed built up one of the woven fences.

Pierre sends " thanks for a quick and great job" and is making plans for future tasks.

Time really does seem to fly.... sitting in the evening sunshine awaiting 6.30 and any more people to join us, blink and it is dark!

So it is definitely time to check those head torches, charge them up and/or replace flat batteries.

Kitted out with the usual bits, we set off on our stroll, starting with the WCG planted areas around the station. Usually just a few bits, but this evening quite some rubbish, sadly.

Some of the items not making it into the bags: - sunglasses - reusable drinking cup - baseball cap All left somewhere prominent now so hopefully their owners will retrieve them.

Metal numberplate brought to attention of police, 2x NO2 canister awaiting recycling.

Summer holiday over, the doors of the babybank had reopened and donations received. So it was time to pop round and do our bit in the process - the initial sorting through the donations by sizes, filtering out the dirty & unusable ones.

After a minor mixup, finding another group in our usual area, we got stuck into digging through several crates while in the mean time catching up about holidays and theatre visits and such things.

Blink and it was approaching 8PM just as we finished the last few bits. Packing up and putting the bags of sorted items away didn't take too long, so after a final sit down we went our own ways.

With more crates already waiting, it might not be the usual 6 weeks before we come back!

Four GGers and three friends of Frenford arrived to help out at Frenford Foodbank' final session today. Sadly, for various reasons Frenford is no longer able to house its foodbank. Originally it was set up to help families struggling through lockdown and its done well to continue for as long as it did. As always todays volunteers did a great job of putting together 36 food packages and including leaflets advising service users where else they can get help.

Massive kudos to all goodgymmers who have been involved in this project over the years, we have been involved pretty much from the start and it was fitting that we played a part in the final session. I have been told it would not have kept going as long as it did without us so we should all be proud of our input.

Turned out it was only me that turned up. Ended up cycling there, found a route along the highway which has been known for litter, unfortunately I forgot my phone, and battery was running low, so no photos, but did end up with 2 bags of rubbish, which turned out to be great arm workout. The downside is the litter pick took about an hour and a half, so no time for a run 😒, and then I headed home 🚴

Julia and Linda cycled over to help Mr & Mrs B

Mr & Mrs B were having problems with their doorbell security and they explained a bit about the set up. It soon became clear this was no ordinary ring doorbell but more like a full security system. Julia established from the app that the camera had no power, we traced the wiring back from the camera to a plug socket that was switched off. Having restored power the camera still didn’t work. Google search suggested using the camera reset button but we didn’t attempt this as the cameras were too high and the only available ladder was considered unsafe. From talking to them it seemed their system and other problems were way above our skill set. We gave them Age UKs advice line number to help them find trusted qualified people who could help, apologised for not being able to do more and left.