Sanding at the theatre Branded a volunteer What will they say Monday at work?

Someday, when the toilets are painted Somehow, someway, our two worlds will be one

I sit, I wonder whyyyyy… Oh why you left the walls so smooth Oh, GoodGym, baby

As we come to the end of another year and another year of good deeds, that can only mean one thing... it must be time for lots of silliness and merriment at the GoodGym Ealing Xmas party!

This year was no different as we got together at the Draper's Arms in Ealing. First up, it was time for drinks and a late dinner after another GoodGym Ealing tradition, our task to prepare St Mary's church for their Xmas services.

As drinks were drunk and stomachs stopped rumbling, it was time for the first event of the night, the GoodGym Ealing awards. As a nice bunch of people, there was an award and a badge for everyone 🙌. Chris was recognised for his work as the area's S-Club 7 lovin' Sound Engineer, Christos was the Phoenix who changed areas and rose from the ashes of injury and Emmanuella was outed as a Double Agent for her work with Cultivate.

Steph then announced that he was Santa Claus and got his big sack of presents ready for each of the GoodGymers to rummage around. It was time for Secret Santa of course. Even with a £5 limit, there were still some choice gifts for us busy GoodGymers including some gardening gloves, a head massager to relieve the stress of a challenging group run and a big box of chocolates 😋

Finally, the part we'd all been waiting for 🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁 Milly and Claire's big quiz! Rounds included Ealing history, identifying Milly's favourite celebrities and the innovative make-a-wheelbarrow-from-a-sheet-of-tinfoil round.

At the end of the night, the food was all gone, the drinks were gone and team Never Mind the Bullocks (or something like that) were the proud winners of the quiz of the year!

Right. 2 weeks off then we go again! 🚀

The last group run before the Christmas break needs a truly joyful task. What can bring the GoodGymers more festive spirit than helping a friendly church with the tidy-up before the holiday season? Putting up a Christmas tree, of course! Vicar Steve from St Mary's Church had both of the tasks for us tonight! Emily found out about the tree decorating opportunity early enough to beat anyone else to it and book the artistic job for GoodGym.

Four runners, including two speedy Santas, met as usual in Ealing Broadway and went for a short run to South Ealing where they were welcomed by Steve and invited inside the church. Aaah, an indoor task in December - a luxury!

With more GoodGymers arriving soon after, everyone wanted to have a go at the Christmas decorations, leaving only three people to give Steve a hand upstairs. The upper level had a great view but got a bit dusty. The floor needed hoovering - a job diligently done by Cam, joined later by Madhan. Steph Ducat and Kash were spraying the benches with Mr Sheen and polishing the seats. Reinforcements: Sevan, Christos and Claire would come later.

In the meantime, if the Christmas tree had emotions, it would have felt pretty overwhelmed, surrounded by a crowd of GoodGymers. If you are thinking about the "how many GoodGymers does it take to...?" question right now, it needed a team of five to wrap the lights around the tree! Putting up the baubles was an equally strategic exercise and, after the decorations were in place, no one dared to challenge the status quo.

Don't touch it, don't touch it!

There was only one ladder - most impressively used by Chris to deliver the star to the top of the tree - which meant that others, standing on the floor, like Jenni (not as tall as Mike!), had to resort to throwing the remaining decorations at the top of the Christmas tree.

There was some Christmas carol-themed jamming going on at St Mary's tonight, with Claire singing accompanied by Jenni at the piano. Madhan and Milly gave the drums a shot.

Steve was delighted with GoodGym's 45 minutes of joyful tidying and decorating activities. Even if the people-to-efficiency ratio was not convincing (we're sure it was!), the ratio of enthusiasm-to-people was skyrocketing! Steve wished the gang of merry men and women a happy Christmas and a great party tonight. The GoodGymers said their Merry Christmases and goodbyes too and ran and walked to Drapers pub for a night of fun, food and festivities.

Our GoodGym has a fantastic history of working with St Mary's Church in South Ealing. We haven't been to their church garden for a while. Someone had to make a move and make things happen. That person was Milly. She got back in touch with Vicar Steve and organised a gardening task for us. Result?

14 Ealing GoodGymers weeding, chopping, cutting and pulling trees - that's a 2023 record! 🥳

Today's session featured:

• A welcome to Arran and Louise 🎉 (the latter we had already met at Pitshanger junior parkrun) to GoodGym Ealing - a welcome with a twist! Both of them have been already doing group sessions in Ealing back in 2018, so they should be really welcoming the rest of us! 😆
• Comebacks of Ben and Cam who rushed to the group run so much that the GoodGym logo of his red t-shirt couldn't match his pace and was left behind. We are sure it will catch up with Cam before his next group run
• The usual suspects: Claire, Mike and Milly
• Cyclists: Emmanuella, Madiha and our Hammersmith friend, Divya
• Runners: Steph, Sevan, Kash and already mentioned Ben who all ran through Walpole Park and around Lammas Park to the church - it was a lovely run in the late afternoon sun 🌞
• Madhan who walked to the task which earned him his own category on this list!

Milly and Ben volunteered to help inside the church move boxes with documents. The task involved heights and climbing a ladder. Our heroes' skills could match the Horsenden mountain goats, so no one fell down. Steph and Mike were taken on a special expedition to cut back a large tree. The rest of the group stayed in the main garden area that was troubled by weeds.

Our main enemies were:

• Sycamore tree saplings - they grew from the seeds fallen from the nearby adult trees and covered the area like a carpet. We had to remove them with the roots while they were still young before they all turned into full-sized trees!
• Brambles - Ealing is already full of brambles. Why would they hesitate to enter the land of a holy building?
• Bindweed - there was surprisingly little of that bad boy but pulling it was satisfying as usual!

In an hour we transformed the area, making the weed blanket disappear and the clear ground reappear. We made space for the native perennial plants to thrive. Steve was pleased with our efforts and was sure our work will help the area's biodiversity.

After we transported all the garden waste to the back of the church garden, it was time to...

go to the pub!

...but then an alternative appeared:

who would like to do a fitness session first?

There were seven takers for the fitness. They were served an easygoing core workout with a focus on the lower back, followed by musical planks. The latter was a brutal survival game in which the players enter a grassy arena and run around cones accompanied by classical music. When the music stops, a person who cannot find a cone to plank in front of is out of the game. Did I mention burpees as the penalty? Ealing was by Hammersmith's plankiator Divya who earned the title of the King of Planks.

The fitness session was so absorbing that the group that exercised showed up a the pub too late to mingle with the original party crew. Nevertheless, they stayed for a quick one and enjoyed the still warm August night in the pub garden 🍻.

Next week we are running to Acton to flyer for the Reduce & Recycle Hub.

A week after, at the group run, we tackle a task similar to the one at St Mary's but for a new church - St Andrews Church and its community centre! It is 5 minutes walk from Ealing Broadway. Check it out here.

8 GoodGymers met in South Acton to transform flower beds as part of the Acton Flower Show. Alex arrived first at Culivate's site to unlock the door to the treasure trove of plants and equipment that would be used to transform the beds. Others arrived soon after with Emily and Cam walking, Kash, Harvey and Sevan running from Bodyline, then Lionel and Divya arriving by bike.

Two wheelbarrows were loaded with bulbs including lots of hyacinths, a selection of hole making tools and a litter picker. Once loaded, Harvey lead the way to the flower beds as this was his second visit to the site, so he knew where to take us. We soon arrived at our destination, 6 flower beds in a pedestrian walkway with residential South Acton at one end and industrial South Acton at the other.

The budding garden designers split into 2 groups, vying for top prize in the Most Beautify Hyacinth Display contest. Team Classicist went for a geometric approach, not able to deal with the disorder of planting bulbs randomly they planted in rows. Team Renegade on the other hand went for a random, scattergun approach, embracing the chaos that exists in nature which isn't planned or designed.

Each team had 45 minutes to design and plant their gardens. Overseeing both teams, Kash made sure there wasn't any funny business going on. The rivalry was mostly fair, other than a few bulbs being sneakily offloaded into the other team's pile, giving them extra work to do.

During this time, Sevan hadn't been granted membership of either team, so he busied himself with other tasks like litter picking (mostly cigarette butts) and hammering the Cultivate stake into the ground to advertise their involvement at the flower beds.

The planting finished just as the darkness was descending. With the last bulb put into the soil, the portable lights came out. They weren't needed to shed light onto the GoodGymers' work but they were perfect for setting up and taking the group photo.

Judging will happen in 3 months time, when we'll know if chaos or order has won the day and will take home the winner's medal.