GoodGym Ealing and Hanwell Hootie go together like salt and pepper. Each year, the famous free music festival run by local people, attracts thousands of music lovers who swarm in Hanwell to hear emerging young bands - and our team is around to support that brilliant volunteer-led initiative! No wonder why the numbers picked up at tonight's group run to the Brent Lodge Park's Stables to help the Hootie organisers: June and Andrea.

Since the Hootie was in less than three weeks, it was about time to start organising the equipment stored at the Stables: mostly furniture and banners. But here is a twist:the storage space was struck by an unexpected leak, resulting in damp floor in one of the rooms! The solution: all the things had to be brought into the yard, where Andrea would triage them and decide which items were going back inside and which the Stables needed to part with. It was a perfect challenge for 8 GoodGymers with an hour to spare!

The runners Mohamed, Steph Ducat, Sevan and Kash were glad to see regulars Claire and Madhan again after a short break and welcome a pair of new starters: Erin and Nick. The two could not have chosen a better group run task: local to them, contributing to a beloved Hanwell event, and challenging and fun at the same time!

While part of the team set off to move the furniture in varying states outside, others got rock-and-rolling (mostly rolling) festival banners. On such a great spring evening, we thought that even sofas, armchairs, tables and giant "H" letters deserved a dose of fresh air. Particularly sickly furniture pieces: legless, ripped and mouldy, were going to stay outdoors even longer than us. Spoiler alert: they were not coming back. We split the rest of the items into a YES pile (this year's stuff) and a NO pile (another time stuff). The YES things needed to be kept together and placed in an easily accessible (and most dry) part of the Stables ahead of the festival. We didn't discriminate against the NO objects - they were going back inside too, and for all items, we steered away from putting them in the previously flooded sections.

Our amazing team, thanks to determination, teamwork, muscle- and brainpower (and June's clear direction), achieved the goal in about 65 minutes - and even squeezed in a team photoshoot!

Our tonight's efforts will certainly make the Hootie prep smoother! If you want to join the next task to help the festival, see us in two weeks at the same location - sign up for the session now!

After setting up the 2025 Ealing Animal Fair in the morning, it was time for donkeys, horses and cats to go home, along with the humans. In fact, many of the animal charities present at this year's Ealing Animal Fair were already packed up by the time team GoodGym arrived to help the organisers wrap up.

Everyone got to work folding tables, stacking chairs and clearing the kitchen of unwanted food. Madhan went searching for and found an unusual tool, a chair mover to relocate stacks of plastic chairs, putting it to great use to neatly arrange the chairs along the walls of the main hall.

When stallholders were ready, GoodGymers did the opposite of the morning's set up task, moving their equipment from the halls back to their cars to keep traffic in front of the church flowing. Leaflets, signage, merchandise and a lot of plush animal toys made their way into vans and car boots. Some organisations had more difficulty that others, having collected new equipment at the fair which left them with a headscratching packing problem.

In 30 minutes, the church had been cleared of dogs, lions and primates and it looked like... well... a church again, ready for services on Sunday morning.

Sevan and I are not new to this task as we had last year's experience. Wait for a car to show up at the front of the church. Carry bags and packages to respective tables arranged inside the church. For Beata, it was her first time, but she fit right into the task.

I took a side quest of helping an old lady post a story on her Facebook, after 10 minutes of struggle, we gave up and posted it on Instagram instead.

The weather was foggy but better than last year's rainy task. It was a chill morning and after helping out few charities take their bags to their allocated tables, the task came to an end. Sevan ran off to Horsenden for a few more tasks and Beata & I vanished into the smog.