Celebrating 8 years of doing good together is not something to be taken lightly. Our GoodGym had to find an appropriate task to honour the tradition of charitable efforts in Ealing properly! What about helping a charity that is 540 years old? For our anniversary session, we arrived at the William Hobbayne Centre to help the charity maintain the outdoor space. Over the last year, it got mossy and needed a refresh. The eleven GoodGymers had less than an hour to make the yard clear of weeds and look shiny.

Mike and Milly grabbed the hoes and gave everyone an example of what proper moss scraping looks like. Harvey, Penny, Claire and Sevan went for big wins, pulling the weeds on a large scale. Ijo with Christos specialised in sweeping and bagging abundances of leaves. Divya and Kash went back to the shed to hunt for some big tools. They returned with enormous brushes and snow shovels, which they, together with Steph, turned into moss ploughs.

The cake & pizza o'clock was approaching fast, so the team took no breaks and worked tirelessly to scrape and sweep all the unwanted greenery. After packing the waste into countless bags and denying the hitchhiking snails the ride to the bins, the gang returned the tools and moved all rubbish sacks to the front of the centre for disposal. The backyard looked pristine.

June from the Hobbayne Charity felt very grateful for yet another contribution from GoodGym. As it often happens, the gratitude was mutual as tonight's party was hosted at the William Hobbayne Centre! How did it go? Report coming soon here!.

Next week we are making our way to a new partner organisation located between Ealing Broadway and South Ealing, the YMCA nursery to rejuvenate their playground - sign up now!

The Half Acre Field is a woodland at the foot of the Wharncliffe Viaduct in Hanwell. Looked after by the William Hobbayne Charity, the area is used by the local schools to encourage outdoor education and host wellbeing sessions for children with disabilities.

Today's group run took Steph, Sevan and Kash for a 3km run from Ealing Broadway to Brent Meadow, where they met Paul from GoodGym Hounslow, a frequent guest, who had been mesmerised by all the greenery of the Queen of the Suburbs. Together, they walked up towards the viaduct, where Christos had been guarding the footbridge over River Brent. It was great to see him back, showing up at the task, not deterred by the injury. It was the first time we saw Christos wearing tracksuit bottoms and not shorts - not in January but in July! It turned out to be a very smart choice as the rest of us ended up with our lower limbs becoming prey to mosquitos.

We walked through a path in the woodland to meet Dee of Haven Woods, the task owner. We held our hands up, terrorised by a gang of nettles growing on both sides of the footpath. Someone should have done something with those nettles... Guess who!

Dee brought us a bucket of shears which we carried to a safe location in the Secret Garden, where the activities for children with special needs and the outdoor gong baths were held. But you didn't hear anything about it from us! Our task was to cut back the nettles, brambles and thistles (all nasty stuff, right?) to allow the pedestrians safer and more comfortable passage through the woods. But the secret path to the Secret Garden was to remain a little bit overgrown to preserve a decent level of secrecy.

A few walkers thanked us for making the path more accessible, which gave us a nice, fuzzy feeling. In an hour we transformed the narrow passage into a picturesque promenade for the public, and Dee collected the litter.

It was Sevan's 700th good deed, so we couldn't finish the task in another way than celebrating that in the pub!

While we were on the way to The Viaduct, three goals were scored in tonight's game between Spain and France - and no more goals after we sat down in front of a screen in the pub - typical! We have been recognised as a regional force of doing good by The Viaduct patrons who turned out to be the Hanwell Carnival crew. Sadly, we didn't have volunteers to help them this year, but fingers crossed we'll support the carnival in 2025!

Next week we are back for more chopping at Walpole Park - sign up now! Cannot wait for another Tuesday group run? Come and join us on Saturday at Western Road for a good gardening workout, fantastic company and samosas. We have also a session in Acton this Sunday to promote a local recycling hub.

The final round of the annual Hobbayne Quiz was in sight and the GoodGym team's strongest dishwashers were substituted into action to help bring order to the kitchen. Madiha and Afsar joined the team, bringing their ceramic scrubing prowess to join forces with Divya.

There was an ongoing struggle to keep the dirty dishes in check as 90-odd of them flowed into the kitchen and piled up on the counters. The dishwasher was loaded, then Kash initially started hand washing while the others took up the offer of chicken or chickpea curry. Once they were powered back up, the whole team went to soak, scrub and dry normal sized plates and commercial sized cookware. Always the most fun part of the night.

While the scrubbing dream team continued hand washing and reloading the dishwasher, Kash, Penny and Sevan were dispatched on the down low to clear the tables of any rubbish.

Then another clandestine task, to find good homes for portions of leftover chickpea curry, as there wasn't enough for everyone to have seconds. Individual tables were asked and had takeaway containers delivered to them. The foil containers were spotted though by sharp eyed people from other tables, who waved to ask about the possibility of left overs too.

Soon, the results of the quiz were announced and the evening started to wrap up. A final sweep was made for rubbish, with the guests helping to clear their tables. All that was left to do was fold up the tables, stack the chairs and pack away the tuck shop.

The organisers went home happy that everyone had had a great evening and no food had been wasted. The GoodGym team had contributed to both of those achievements, including by taking home their own shiny packages of curry for tomorrow's lunch or dinner.

The annual fundraising quiz at the William Hobbayne Centre is a fun get-together for the local community in Hanwell, where all the funds raised support some fantastic outdoor projects like the Forest School and HANGOT. As usual, the Ealing GoodGymers have been invited to help make the night wonderful for all the guests.

When Kash arrived at the centre, she found the only survivor of the setup task, Sevan, alongside Madhan, tearing and folding hundreds of raffle tickets. It's been a real crunch time to get them ready on time but everyone had fun trying to make it.

It was a quiz night, and when the GoodGymers made an appearance in the main hall, the only question they were asking was:

"How many veggie and chicken options at this table?"

Madhan, Sevan and Kash were scrambling to get the plates with the ordered food to the guests while Divya was employed to fluff the rice and Penny was embellishing each dish with naan bread. Tonight's menu had a chicken curry or chickpea and lentil curry. The guests' preferences between meat and vegetarian choices were not exactly balanced.

"Two veggie and five chicken please" - said Sevan at the door of the kitchen.

"I am waiting for two chicken meals" - said Kash.

"I have eleven chicken orders" - announced Madhan.

Two vegetarian plates were waiting for a few minutes for some attention. Eventually, Mandy, the vegetarian chef, decided to put them into the oven for the time being. Then, Madhan took one of those plates. Finally, some interest in chickpeas and lentils!

"Seventeen chicken for me!" - said Madhan, coming back after delivering the veggie order.

After the meal - which was also offered to our volunteers - it was time for the raffle. The GoodGymers have received three stripes of tickets each. Sevan had the honour of drawing a ticket for one of the winners. But that's not all! He also won the last prize in the raffle - a glittery bracelet! We cannot wait to see him wearing it at the next task!

Steph Ducat, Ijo and Sevan were raring to go to set up for the Hobbayne Charity's annual quiz. There were some tasks they were expecting, like setting up the tables and wrapping up the cutlery. Others were new to them, as Ijo found when she was asked to steam the tablecloths as they'd come out of a box looking very crinkled.

Steph and Sevan worked with the task owner, June, on the maths of configuring tables and chairs. "Nine, six, six, no, that table's a five, eight", went the calls. They made sure that all the expected people had a chair and somewhere to eat their curry.

Steph and Sevan moved on to wrapping cutlery for the attendees and getting the crockery in the kitchen ready for plating. As everything was ready ahead of time, at front of house, Ijo ran the tuck shop as the guests started to arrive.

Everyone's tapping their foot and there seems to be no stop for dancing around. The music switched from Scottish classics to party mode and newer tunes started playing.

Chris needed the well-deserved break after orchestrating the dance earlier. Kash and Sevan went to the corner shop to quench their thirst. Steph, Cherian and I were enjoying the dance. The cleanup task was planned for 10:15 pm -11:15 pm. Cherian left around 10:30 pm after doing back-to-back community missions from the morning.

We all waited for the dance party to stop so that we could start cleaning things up.

Chris said let's take out all the empty bottles from the tables while we are waiting. After a few minutes, most empty bottles were taken care of and binned. We then went back to waiting mode.

Kash was saying the report would be

We waited, we waited, we waited and then we left

I haven't checked the time for quite a while. It was 11:20 pm when I heard And now my bedsheets smell like you... playing in the speakers. I realized I needed to get under my bedsheets soon, as the tiredness hit me then.

Kash then went to June and said we had to leave and agreed to clean up what we could in the next 15 minutes. Chairs were stacked, tables were folded and all the goodgymers were moving around and clearing things up.

We left the William Hobbayne centre with some takeaway haggis 10 minutes short of midnight.