After a upper body warm up session, 3 of the GoodGymers at Pitshanger Junior parkrun this morning arrived with fast beating hearts and warm fingers and toes. That was good as winter wasn't coming, it had already arrived overnight with the cold Pitshanger wind sweeping through the park.

To keep warm, Gaby ran to her marshal post, while Kash, Maria and Sevan had more easy going roles. Kash was tailwalking for the second parkrun in a row, Maria barcode scanned and Sevan was cheering runners over the line and trying to record their times correctly. That was challenging as waves of children finished in quick succession. The first finisher was rapid too as she entered the funnel in under 7 minutes!

At the back, there was a relay taking place. Not with the runners, but the boy's support crew. As Kash passed marshal posts on the the final lap, the would be 120th finisher upgraded his granny for his mum who'd been volunteering as marshal number 2. The team effort of granny, mum, Kash and later Gaby too helped him make it to the finish line and get to a nice round number of finishers.

The second 6km run of the day took Sevan and Kash from Southall, through Osterley Park, to the final, third GoodGym session that Saturday. The two stopped in front of a house adorned with planters full of colourful flowers that made them think it wasn’t late autumn yet. They knew right away that someone who loves gardening lived inside. Soon, they found out that the dweller loved her dog too.

As soon as they rang the doorbell, they heard incessant barking. It was Miss B’s dog, an old girl whose name in English meant little mouse. The poor pooch couldn’t see well, but was lovely if given some time to settle. After sniffing the GoodGymers thoroughly and being rewarded with a treat for good behaviour, Miss B’s companion was Sevan’s and Kash’s best friend, looking for cuddles.

Miss B loved her eco-friendly garden, but was too unstable on her feet to take good care of it. Having 90 minutes of Ealing Goodgymers’ time, she asked them to complete a unique set of gardening tasks:

• Uprooting last season’s tomato and chilli plants
• Deadheading old flowers
• Trimming a shrub in a pot
• Planting violas so their flowers could keep the planters colourful throughout the winter
• Replanting a kumquat and cavolo nero plant
• Sweeping leaves for the compost bin

The session, which finished after sunset, sharpened Sevan’s and Kash’s gardening skills more than the multiple missions they had done this season so far. The new experience was not the only reward! Miss B had some home-baked carrot cake to share and a green chilli pepper that Kash had saved from the compost bin. What a lovely end of a November afternoon!

Mrs K had asked for a grass cutting mission in November. On Friday, that seemed destined not to happen as the heavens opened and rain poured down. Saturday was a different story though, with the grass being only a bit wet, it was fine to mow.

As Kash started the first pass with the strimmer, Sevan wondered what he was going to do. Looking around the back garden, it didn't look to have many weeds to tackle. Mrs K had the answer. First, the council workers had moved a large plant pot when they put in her new fence and they'd left her trellis a bit wonky. Sevan sorted those out and made himself jobless again.

As Kash started pass 2 with the lawnmower, Mrs K led Sevan to the front garden where she asked for 2 rose bushes to be trimmed as they were growing too quickly. After that, Sevan got on with weeding the front garden, including some really stubborn ones. Near the end, Mrs K's neighbour showed up and had a triple awkward conversation with Sevan.

"Hello, hello, hello." - Mrs K's neighbour
"Hello. I'm helping your neighbour with some weeding." - Sevan

The neighbour kept his gaze on Sevan and a few seconds passed.

"How are you today?" - Sevan
"Good, good, good."
"I live here. It's OK." - Mrs K's neighbour

He continued to watch Sevan...

"Well, I'll get on with the weeding." - Sevan

...and with that, Sevan broke free from the neighbour's gaze and finished off the patch he was working on. Meanwhile, Kash had finished cutting the grass and was cleaning the lawnmower and strimmer. The cuttings and weeds were bagged up leaving Mrs K's garden ready for winter, then Kash and Sevan set off for their next mission.

The last community day of the year at Western Road Urban Garden brought four mighty GoodGymers for a proper strength workout: dismantling a pile of tree stumps and logs. The task was not only about the fitness pursuits - Janpal, the manager of Southal Community Alliance, laid out his vision of the transformation to come. Firstly, he wanted to create more space for food growing, and the timber mound stood in the way to a perfect location for new veg beds. Secondly, the gaps in the fence between the urban garden and the neighbour’s private property needed fixing, and a natural barrier made of logs seemed like a simple, proven solution. We had built timber walls at Western Road several times before and knew our craft, so we turned into nature’s best engineers once again.

I feel like a beaver doing this - Afshin.

The timber mound was defended by tall nettles. Sevan and Kash had run to the task in the typical GoodGym armor - shorts and t-shirts - which was not best suited for stinging opponents, but, luckily, Paul from Ealing Parks Foundation came to the rescue with a strimmer.

Having secured access to the materials, the GoodGymers made sure the foundations for the Fortress Western Road were strong. Afshin and Kash had to pull out a fence part and a derelict trolley from under ivy overgrowth. The first thing Janpal was going to repurpose, the second was only junk and a reminder of how full of rubbish Western Road had been back when we first started supporting the site.

Two very different approaches to construction dominated the scene this Saturday. The gap in the fence, filled by Ash and Sevan, was built with stumps and thin, long logs shooting to the sky like skyscrapers. It was bold, innovative, and unapologetically vertical. The other wall, erected by Afshin, Kash, and Janpal, was a tribute to stability and tradition, with its unruffled horizontal lines of perfectly slotted large, straight logs.

Just when the masterpieces of contemporary and classical art were finished, Western Road was treated to a visit from Mr Bhasin from Manor Way Allotments, and the volunteers were treated to a feast of veg and meat samosas, tea, coffee, coconut water, and a couple of trays of sweet, fresh fruit. The members of the community, who visited the garden, could help themselves to the last bits of this year's harvest: pumpkins from the polytunnel.

After the break, two GoodGym architecture schools joined forces for the last hour of log lifting, rolling, flipping, and hurling in an effort to clear the timber area entirely. This time, filling the fence gaps resembled a rogue speed-stacking the tree stumps and covering them with smaller twigs and sticks that had to be used up, too. Eventually, Fortress Western Road stood strong, protecting its newly acquired, valuable growing grounds. It will remain unconquered by anyone - maybe apart from the local fox!

We are pausing the Western Road sessions for a December break, but we will be back early in the new year, in January, February, and March. We’ve got the dates - save them now!

Unlike the last few times, when I had visited my regular Friday customer, Mr G was in high spirits. Despite his ongoing personal and health issues, he had some positive news from his doctor, that made him feel a bit younger and more cheerful. Apart from enjoying his usual quick wit in action, I was happy to see hope in his eyes that evening. We had a good chat before I left for Sainsbury's.

There was nothing unusual on the shopping list, so I did my usual route through the aisles from memory. We had recently concluded with Mr G that I must have been the person who knew best where all his favourite products were located in his local supermarket - better than himself!

Mr G praised the choice of savoy cabbage I brought back with me, and then we chatted about his late beloved cat, whose pictures Mr G still kept on display. The conversation then steered into Mr G's days of being an artist and spending nearly all his spare time in the studio, producing incredible amounts of artwork. He showed me a couple of his large silk screen prints he had recently pulled out from his portfolio. I felt that was a very special experience to see his thought-provoking art, otherwise hidden from others' eyes - a privilege for a trusted GoodGymer!