Sevan and Kash make their way to the Westbourne Park area after an earlier rather successful mission in East Acton. They arrive at Mrs A, who needs help with assembling a new wardrobe.

Does the name of the wardrobe, Tallboy, sound intimidating?

A little bit. It's large, has drawers to assemble, and comes with hundreds of fixings. But it cannot be that bad, can it? "Flat Pack for Easy Home Assembly", the website says. And the estimated completion time is 90 minutes for two people.

Where are the tools?

There are no tools. Luckily, Sevan brings with him a single screwdriver. There is no hammer required for the job, though. Uh-oh.

Wait, has someone opened the box already?

Mrs A solves the mystery for Sevan and Kash. It involves her referrer, Ms E.

"E. opened the box and decided it was a bit too much for her" - Mrs A.

Here's where the GoodGymers come in.

Where are the parts?

Some can be found in the box, some next to a cupboard and others - surprise, surprise - hidden behind a window curtain! Well done, Sevan, for looking behind it! Phew.

What are those parts?

Good question. Five or so elements are labelled. The rest is unidentified. Sevan and Kash give their best guess, and Kash writes the numbers on the unknown pieces.

Are there instructions?

Luckily, yes! The print is small and the light in the room is dim. Kash cannot see the shape of the fixings in the instructions and condemns herself for not taking the glasses with her.

Is there enough space for assembly?

Yes - the parts awaiting their turn can be stored in the corridor - until Mrs A needs to go to the other room!

How long does step 1 take to complete?

No one recalls. Documenting the process would be like writing "War and Peace". After inserting 66 pegs into 66 holes in various wooden pieces and forcefully twisting 20 plastic elements labelled "P" into another 20 holes (which would have been much quicker with a hammer), the GoodGymers find out that step 1 also requires putting in several screws. With one screwdriver and two people. That's step 1 done. Hurray!

Was the wardrobe built in 90 minutes?

After two hours of searching for tools, wardrobe parts, and guessing which fixings are in compartments with multiple labels, Sevan asks Kash the difficult question.

"Do you want to stay till 7 pm to complete it?"

The mission started at 2:30 pm. The GoodGymers cannot work in parallel with Sevan's single screwdriver. Building the four drawers alone may take a while. There is no hammer to complete the job. The duo decides to pause the job before the wardrobe becomes three-dimensional without providing much use.

How does it feel to be defeated by the Tallboy?

Pretty ok. The rain is gone, the sun is out. Progress has been made. There must be better GoodGym fighters out there to take on the Tallboy!

Sevan and Kash walked from Acton Central (after junior parkrun and coffee with other GoodGymers) to East Acton for a return visit to Mr S, whose garden was under attack by a joint forces of brambles and bindweed. The vines posed a serious trip hazard to the older gentleman, who had recently suffered a fall and an injury to his head. He felt better when two Ealing GoodGymers visited, but was still unstable on his feet, and couldn't tend to his garden in full capacity.

Sevan pulled the pesky bindweed and cut the brambles while Kash strimmed the wet grass and baby blackberries, then raked them together with last year's fallen leaves. The duo spotted a rogue sycamore tree (which they had probably come across during their previous visit a long time ago). Sevan cut it back as much as possible with a pair of secateurs.

The mission finished with filling the tenth black bag with garden waste and moving the sacks to the front of the house. Mr S, who had initially thought that GoodGymers were coming today "just to look at the garden", was delighted to see how much was achieved in 90 minutes.

Enthusiasm for taking part in Acton Junior parkrun was a bit low this week as the runners could see that it wasn't summer anymore by looking out of their windows. The rain held off for the parkrun, it was just miserable before and after, making the achievement of the 37 finishers all the more impressive.

Divya almost missed out on completing his 250th good deed - which he only mentioned after the run - with the Run Director searching around for her missing funnel manager. He did make it on time though to keep children in order and heading straight through the funnel to collect their finish tokens from Joanna. Ahead of the start, most GoodGymers were more concerned with a smaller number. The number of sides on the sculpture that Ariane would be marshalling at. The ad-hoc marshal point for the day that Alan discovered was made up of dodecahedrons ("the big metal things") and was actually meant for bouldering.

Around the course, Steph took on the role of tail walker, encouraging the children at the back to keep going to the finish. Kash was barcode scanning and Alan tried to keep time, battling his iPhone screen that was sensitive to raindrops and could randomly record phantom runners. Sevan was also marshalling and spotted one cheeky participant run through a gate late and join his friend at around 1/3rd distance.

If you'd like to join us next month, in any role around the course, sign up here!

Sevan and Steph Ducat met at Ealing Broadway Station for a chatty run to Acton Junior parkrun. A few drops at the start of the 3km run which increased on the run. It was raining cats and dogs when we arrived at the park.

Western Road Urban Garden is a wonderful place managed by Southall Community Alliance. The site, converted from a derelict allotment and dumping ground into a thriving garden, welcomes children from local schools and helps them learn where food and vegetables come from (spoiler: it's not the supermarket!). It also connects Southall residents through gardening and helps fight inequalities in access to fresh food by donating its crops to the local foodbank.

While our previous visit to the garden had been during the time of extreme heat, the July community day welcomed us with the return of the typical British weather: a downpour! Despite the less-than-ideal conditions, Janpal, the SCA manager, and four GoodGymers still made it to the session!

There was an indoor element to the task, quickly finished by Angela: planting and watering aubergines in the polytunnel. Despite the lower turnout today due to the weather, Janpal was happy about the rain as plants desperately needed it. The ones planted in the polytunnel had very limited access to the rainwater. And here's where Angela came in, fighting this in-aquality with a watering can!

Janpal told us about a better irrigation system he planned to install next year. Watering inside the polytunnel every day to keep the crops alive was quite a commitment! WRUG's resident fox might have also been thinking about the irrigation improvements, as he had recently ripped another hole in the polytunnel and had been seen walking on top of it! We've heard more stories about the fox: Janpal's victory over the troublemaker by beating him to the ripe apricots this year, and fox repellents made of wolves' urine.

Sevan, Steph Ducat and Kash worked outside for most of the time, getting all equally soaked. They've made a big difference, chopping nettles and pulling bindweed to free the native hedging. As a result, a massive heap of weeds grew nearby, which Janpal hoped would be collected by the council.

As we completed clearing one side of the hedge and got thoroughly drenched, the session finished earlier, with the usual refreshments: fruit, tea, coffee and samosas in the polytunnel.

WRUG is taking a break from hosting community days in August, but you can join us at a different urban garden. Come to volunteer in Greenford at the beginning of next month. Sign up here!

Sevan was faced with a locked door when he arrived at Mr G's flat, which was pretty unusual. Mr G normally has an open door policy for GoodGymers, so this time Sevan rang the bell and waited. Eventually Mr G appeared and said that he'd fallen asleep on the sofa in the afternoon which he was annoyed by, but sounded quite idylic to Sevan.

The list of groceries from last week was recycled as there wasn't time to prepare a new one. Mr G had decided that cherry yogurts didn't agree with him, so with that caveat, Sevan set off to Sainsbury's with a mostly standard set of items to buy.

Breaking the rules of supermarket shopping, Sevan headed to the back of the store first to get some paninis as they often run out in the evening. He then took a reverse route, ending up at the pie fridge to pick up Mr G's favourite chicken & gravy.

Back at the flat, Mr G was on an important call that he'd told Sevan about earlier, so Sevan loaded the chilled items into the fridge and left everything else on the counter. Unfortunately Sevan didn't get to see the reaction when Mr G found the 2 surprise bananas that were snuck into the basket 🍌.