"The dream team", Mr J exclaimed at the sight of Sevan and Kash marching into his flat. "And Steph is here?", he added.

Steph was not part of this afternoon's team, but the team had to be dream enough even without the third musketeer. The duo had visited Mr J a year and a half ago to attend to the garden, with a follow-up shortly after. Not only were the GoodGymers memorable, but the garden was too.

Two-step ladder? Check!
Strawberries and mint? Check!
Fork and strimmer? Check!
Mud? Check!

This time, Sevan chose to operate the fork, while Kash decided to go for the strimmer. Following a quick assessment, she decided the strimmer was not the answer to a flowery jungle that materialised around the rose bush. Tough stems, easily pullable large weeds, a shady extension cord, and later heavy rain meant that Kash could only pull that off literally by pulling everything out.

Meanwhile, Sevan, working on the flower bed, lamented the loss of strawberries and mint, but kept digging them out diligently as per Mr J's wishes. They would grow back anyway.

After 90 minutes, the GoodGymers were totally soaked, and the garden looked transformed. Since Mr J ran out of his jumbo bin bags, Sevan and Kash filled nine sturdy black sacks and moved them into the refuse area. As a bonus task, the two ran in the rain back from the Caledonian Road area to Highbury to collect precious Ealing litter pickers they had forgotten in a coffee shop earlier. They made it five minutes before the closing time. Phew!

"Temperatures will be in the mid-teens."

There was a lot of speculation between Kash and Sevan about what they would need litter pickers for in Miss S' front garden and how the things to be picked got there. Would there be a lot of household waste? Maybe rubbish from a nearby festival had blown in? Or something entirely different? For 2 GoodGymers to attend, there must be a mountain of junk to deal with.

Peering over Miss S' front fence ahead of the mission, it looked like someone had beaten Kash and Sevan to the clean up. Still, they knocked on the door and Miss S explained that the litter rained from above, over her upstairs neighbour's balcony and she couldn't collect it due to her bad back.

There actually were a few items of litter to be collected including soft drink bottles and crisp packets. A 5 minute job perhaps. So while Sevan litter picked, Kash did a renegade garden tidy, pulling dead plants and weeds from the flower beds and between the paving.

Thirty minutes later, the garden looked like it had had a mini refresh, which Miss S was very happy with. Ideally, her neighbours would stop dropping their litter into Miss S' garden. If they don't, there'll be more work for GoodGymers to speed clean and give Miss S some pride back in her garden.

Early bird GoodGymers were out in force today, with 9 around the course on the day of Maki's - Chikako's daughter's - last Junior parkrun as her birthday is coming soon. They'll both still be at Acton Juniors in the future, volunteering to help the event that they've enjoyed attending for years.

Most of today's marshals were GoodGymers, with Max, Maria, Steph, Michelle and Sevan helping the children and adults navigate the course and cheering them up and down the hills. Kash experienced the hills herself as the tailwalker, playing a key role in getting a couple of less enthusiastic children to the finish line and Chikako was the VI Guide for the last time (for now).

In the funnel, Ariane dished out the finish tokens and Alan was a late substitute to the timekeeper role. As it turned out, Alan saved the day (in a small way), by recording the finish times of the runners more accurately than the other timekeeper, meaning that all 65 finishers were correctly logged.

Chilly Sunday morning but sunny and 5 Goodgymers were up early and were all on time at Ealing Broadway Station to meet up and have small warm up done by me, Steph Ducat before heading to Acton Junior park run. Was Sevan going to run with poles? It looked like walking/running poles, but in fact he had 2 litter pickers that he was going to use later in the day. Kash, Sevan and Steph Ducat run regularly together and we know our pace. Today we had Maria who came from GG Hounslow to run back from where she walked in the morning. Max joined us too. After the warm up, Steph Ducat led the group and asked if 6:00/km was fine with everyone as we had roughly 3km to run. The fantastic 5 set off through the streets of Ealing to Acton Junior parkrun. The pace was good for everyone and we reached the funnel of the parkrun in no time and we were bang on to the predicted pace Steph Ducat set as goal.(See photo) We all reached the park and all had a good chat during the run. We are all pumped up to cheer the children in the park.

They called him Captain Four Wheels,
Because he had four good legs.
He sailed through seas of wet grass
Swinging his two fearsome blades.

Hired two fishy deckhands,
Called them Black Sev and Red Kash.
One cool as a cucumber,
The other stubborn and brash.

Hey! Out into deep grasses
Four Wheels ordered them to sail,
And took into his cabin
Nine bottles: rum, grog and ale.

The ominous clouds gathered,
And a ruthless storm broke out.
Four Wheels drank in his cabin
Nine bottles: rum, grog and stout.

Black Sev flattened the mainsail,
The bindweed ropes were in shreds.
Nobody heard his shouting
To stay low and mind their heads.

Had Four Wheels known his crew well
Surely that bane wouldn't have struck.
Kash was no lad after all.
Women on board means bad luck.

The Captain hugged his bottles,
At the sight of nearby docks.
Haven't made it to the port,
Four Wheels' ship crashed on the rocks.

When the golden sun was back,
They saw grass sea calm and flat,
Hurt Captain became Three Whells,
The nine bottles were intact.

HANGOT and GoodGym were at the most easterly orchard today that HANGOT maintain at Osterley Lock, where they did a brilliant job.

"Once you clear around the fruit trees, it looks like an orchard again. Not only trees in a field." - Mirjam, task owner

Clearing around the fruit trees was top of the priority list for the GoodGymers, removing weeds and brambles, plus some pesky burdock. They were also keeping an eye out for any stones or branches that would damage blades as HANGOT's trained scythe operators would follow, slicing everything to the ground.

Steph, Kash and Sevan got clearing with shears and loppers around pear, apple and quince trees. They even learned how to tell if a quince was ripe. It's when it loses it's fuzz and pulls easily off the branch. All the orchard's quinces were still fuzzy, so still a few more weeks to wait.

Soon, they came across what looked like a fruit tree, but they didn't recognise what the strange looking fruit was. Mirjam came along to explain that it was medlar, which has a few names in French including "cul-de-chien" or "dog's bum hole". The resemblance was... well, a resemblance and the preparation of the fruit was as strange as it's appearance. HANGOT love the trees as they don't need much care, but the GoodGymers decided to stick to the more common fruits that could be eaten straight off the branch and didn't resemble body parts.

Steph moved on to raking and wheelbarrowing duty to finish off the session in another part of the orchard, collecting the scythed cuttings. He took immense pride in making a giant bramble burrito that he rolled to the compost pile.

We'll be back helping HANGOT next month in another orchard along the Grand Union Canal. More details to follow.

Of my many shopping missions for Mr G, this one was particularly notable. I've been buying cavolo nero multiple times for our cherished gentleman from South Acton, but I have never tried it myself. Since I was walking, not running, to missions recently, I purchased the mythical cabbage for myself while completing Mr G's usual list. I then cooked the leaves for dinner, and I must say, they were exquisite. Maybe next time we'll exchange cavolo nero recipes with Mr G?