Steph Ducat and Emmanuella went on a sunny afternoon to the Monday Ealing Soup Kitchen and release the first Good gym volunteers Naomi and Alaa who were on the 4 to 6pm shift. Alaa got stuck in the kitchen and stayed longer to help with the cooking as it was super busy. Steph and Emmanuella started with labelling clothes. Then Emmanuella was on clothing section and Steph was assigned to security at the food take away queue which was a bit heated today...was that due to the sun, hungry clients or something else? Sunny so sun glasses were to hand and they were red!!Feeding hungry people all before midnight and giving them bottles of water....oups 3 rules to remember that Mr Wing mentioned for those who know about the Gremlins :-) . Avoid sunlight, do not let them in contact with water and no feeding after midnight. Of course it was not the case as none are furry and got their food at 6pm!! Once the rush hour was done, we carried on with labels...good thing we dont hate labels as we would have call ourselves the antilabelists. Tonight we were lucky to see the small bags we did from old t-shirts with the Ealing Repair Shop over 2 weeks ago.

GoodGymers from Ealing and Hounslow combined their engineering greatness this morning to create a huge train track for autistic and SEND children to play with and interact with each other. Not only were they "doing engineering", they were also surrounded by engineering marvels as All Aboard Club are trialling the Transport Museum Depot in Acton as a new location. That's pretty awesome 🚇

The group helped unload the last boxes from task owner Richard's car and entered the building to see where they'd be ~~playing~~ working. As they climbed the stairs, they found themselves on a mezzanine level, looking over the historic tube trains in the depot. Exciting for both the volunteers and attendees.

The mezzanine area was big, so it was good that there were 10 people to build the track. Like the children attending, they worked by themselves, then over time, they connected their islands of track to other islands and soon, the whole floor was covered.

As the loose ends were being tied up, the first children started arriving. Sevan joined Richard and the Depot staff in guiding the children and parents in through the gift shop, trying to keep them from being distracted, past the big trains, up the stairs and to the small trains for them to play with. Emmanuella, Gus, Alan and Steph stayed upstairs to help the children and parents, maybe having time to set a few tank engines puffing around the track themselves.

The bell has sounded at the Hanwell School of Boxing Charity. The referee being Linda and in the ring we had Good gymers against the vilains(bindweed brambles and branches). The vilains had decided to corner and cover the ropes of the car park, but Linda and the 3 goodgymers would not be counted out and tackled the over growing opponents. After 90 minutes in the ring it was an ultimate decision : knock out given to Goodgym against brambles and Company. Goodgym did not take the dive. The car park alias the ring was looking much better and Linda can get the cars to park against the fence with no issues. Emmanuella was the lucky star as found £10 while fighting the weeds, which we all decided to drop in Linda boxing school charity box. Harvey ran to the mission and found smiley in the ring. Steph Ducat moved a retired frog boxer back to the woodlands as was clearly knocked out.

Tonight, our group run attendees were sew happy with the task, that they all stayed for an extra 30 minutes to tie up some loose ends and finish off their draw string bags. In total 15 bags were created which task owner Mary will donate to Ealing Soup Kitchen to give to their clients 🛍️

While everyone was excited about the task, there were some experienced needleworkers, some lapsed and others who'd never sewn a stitch in their lives. Mary and Yvonne came prepared with t-shirts which would otherwise have gone for textile recycling and were ready to be given a new life. They explained - more than once - how to slice and dice a t-shirt into 4 bags, using the features of the original garment to easily transform it.

Clare meanwhile inherited the job of hand-sewing the GoodGym flag, making good progress with the letters and also cursing the slippery material of the GGs. Who chose that spangly material is lost in the mists of time. On our next visit, completing the GoodGym flag and the GG challenge will pass on to someone else.

By the end of the task, almost everyone had created at least one bag end to end and learned the skill of threading cord through a hem or waistband. Emmanuella also became a magician, turning a t-shirt into yarn which was a bit like reversing the manufacturing process. Reusing and recycling in act(i)on 💪

See Emmanuella's trick here https://www.instagram.com/p/C-6EiobhtQl/

As every lunch service, there is a cleaning shift, but this shift was special and all about our regular, smiling, non food wasting queen, cleaning queen...the only one but not alone this time ..Emmanuella Well done on your 50 good deeds. Always with a helping hand and a massive smile!!!