St Mary’s Church of South Ealing is well-known to GoodGymers, whether through the weekly food cupboard sessions on Mondays, the gardening tasks in the churchyard, or the annual Christmas tree decoration. Tonight's task was a unique one. The local community was preparing for the first service to mark the start of the ministry of their new vicar, Revd. Joy French. Renowned for their Christmas tidy-up expertise, our team was asked to clean the gallery and tackle cobwebs in the church.

A team of runners and a cyclist arrived at the church to meet the member of the community, Brian, who handed them the tools: a few brushes, a dustpan, and two very long brushes - the cobweb busters. Freya and Kash, excited about getting the extra range, grabbed the super brushes and stayed on the ground floor to clean under the gallery. Iram, Chris, and Sevan, armed with brushes, wipes, and a dustpan, headed upstairs to handle the dust in the gallery.

While dusting, the upstairs team learned that their favourite church tower, an attraction to visit after each Christmas clean-up, was no longer accessible due to safety concerns. Meanwhile, the cobweb vanquishers downstairs discovered a bust of a biblical prophet with two left hands! We completed the job in just an hour and are hoping now that the community will be proud of their dust-free church while welcoming Reverend Joy.

Next week, we are staying in Ealing Broadway for the Tuesday evening session and tackling thistles and brambles in Walpole Park - sign up now to join us!.

If you want to visit St Mary’s during the day, sign up for one (or more) of the weekly sessions at the church’s food cupboard here.

After running a half-marathon and earning yet another medal from the Big Half, Steph caught up with running friends and beat the tube strike to make it to Blondin Park. He was about to meet Sevan and Kash at the GoodGym stall at Brentford Festival and inspire more locals to do good while getting fit.

The last shift of our volunteer-fishing campaign at the festival saw an increase in children’s interest in our game with prizes, which we’ve been turning into an opportunity to talk to parents about flexible volunteering.

The closer to 6 pm, the more gazebos were seen taken down - including a six-legged one we had erected with five GoodGymers, which was kindly dismantled by eight police officers. We lent a hand in taking down a neighbouring gazebo that we had also put up in the morning. The community group we had helped saved us by lending us scissors, without which we wouldn’t have been able to strip down our own stall.

Grateful for the opportunity to showcase GoodGym at the festival, we stayed a bit longer to dismantle the Brentford Festival flags, that sadly won’t be used next year. It was time to say goodbye to a great community event that had been around for 20 years. While we will miss helping out at the festival prep, we are hoping to team up with the fantastic event manager, Linda, again, to support the Blondin Park Consortium in improving the lovely green space between Northflieds and Brentford.