Miss M and her carer greeted Kash and Sevan when they arrived. Miss M lived on a street that Kash and Sevan had run past many times, yet didn't know existed until the Mission Commanders sent them there on this fine Sunday afternoon. Heading into the back garden, they heard classic 80's pop songs bursting from the stereo. Sounds that would keep them company throughout the task.

The ask for Kash and Sevan was to mow the grass. Instead, they decided to put no mow May into action. Not to help pollinators. No, it was because there was no grass to mow. Instead, they found themselves surrounded by large dandelions, a very old lime tree with lots of suckers and metre high hemlock plants. The carer said that she used to mow the plants when she first worked with Miss M. Now, after a break of 2 years, she was looking after Miss M again and in the meantime, the garden had gotten out of control.

The only tools available were a shovel, a set of shears and a lawnmower, so unable to dig, Kash and Sevan improvised to see what they could get done. They decided that the best approach was to try and pull the hemlock out of the ground. They had mixed results, with some coming out easily with their roots, while others broke at the stem. It also resulted in the tiny white petals, shaken from the hemlock branches, to land on their hair and clothes

Dandruff or no dandruff, the duo cleared a path to the lime tree at the back where Sevan started to chop away the suckers. By the end of the task, most of the weeds were at ground level, meaning that Miss M's carer could go back to mowing them away again with her trusty lawnmower.

Did you know that Jim Marshall, a guitar amp innovator, dubbed "the Father of Loud", worked in Hanwell? Marshall passed away in 2012, but his legacy of loud lives through a non-profit, free one-day festival: the Hanwell Hootie. On Saturday, live music was heard all across the town, from a local park, through a "busking boat", numerous pubs, a church and even a library. Loud in a library? Liberating, isn't it?

The Hanwell Community Library was the first place where six GoodGymers convened the next day after the festival to help with the teardown. Divya, who cycled to the task, beat everyone else to it. Anuj ran from the North-West and the rest of the runners from the East (think Acton junior parkrun).

One GoodGymer was coming from further East than that! John, a guest from Camden, ran from his area to us and, when reaching the library, he totalled nearly 20 km, thanks to a spontaneous decision to do an extra community mission in Ealing! Both John and Steph are training for next week's Hackney Half, so getting to the tasks on foot is a nice motivation booster for them.

Having quickly taken down the hessian that Sevan and Kash had put over the books on Friday, the group walked to Sandy Park where the task owner, June, awaited with a multitude of activities:

• Taking down four tents
• Cutting cable ties using various tools
• Loading vans with boxes and folded gazebos
• Riding at the back of the van
• Organising the reusable Hootie-themed pint cups into boxes
• Pondering whether the soggy, beer-scented cardboard is recyclable
• Playing a game with the cups that Steph can explain better

The Hootie team supplied us with water and fruit to keep our energy levels up to a good standard in the direct sun and after all the running. June thanked us for our contribution to the Hootie and invited us to a post-Hootie catch-up for volunteers later. The GoodGymers headed towards the Clocktower in Hanwell for some coffee and food, after which some of us were ready for either more tasks, running, cycling or an afternoon nap.

That's where the GoodGym at Hootie 2024 story ends. Hanwell will remain a quiet town until next year. But who knows!

Today's Acton Junior parkrun involved a game of chicken between a Greener Ealing truck collecting waste bags in Acton Park and an army of charging children. The scene was set when, after the children had been released at the start, the truck decided to drive onto one of the paths of the course.

When the Greener Ealing truck arrived at the first bin it stopped to one side, then, further along at the second, the driver decided to park diagonally across the path of the children. As the runners approached, the driver and children stared each other down. Who would yield? One of the regular volunteers, Jane, fearing an epic clash ran over to speak to the driver. It's not known what she said, but it was probably something like "those children can be terrifying. Get out of here while you still can!"

The driver took another look at the neon clad kid leading the charge and decided to take Jane's advice. He got off the path as quickly as he could, which meant going cross country onto the grass.

With that out of the way, it was a pretty normal Junior parkrun. Kash, Steph, John, Joanna, Michelle and Sevan were marshalling, with Divya on finish tokens and Chikako taking the role of VI Guide.

We were back helping HANGOT this morning at their Elthorne Triangle orchard, an area we know well as it's right next to the tool container that we use in Elthorne Park. Kash, Anuj and Sevan ran to the site in shorts and t-shirt as it was another warm, sunny day. They soon saw that the other volunteers were all wearing trousers as today's task was to clear hemlock, burdock and lots of nettles from around the trees.

The GoodGym trio took what they thought was the simplest task, to clear everything from around a heritage fruit tree that HANGOT had adopted and was believed to be over 100 years old! There was no need to decided what to cut, everything had to be cleared in a big ring around the tree.

When the got closer, they saw that there was a huge patch of nettles growing around the tree. Not great if you're in running shorts. The team bravely got stuck in to the task, helped by one of the HANGOT volunteers who cleared the way with a wickedly sharp scythe. They then raked and bagged the waste, adding it to a huge pile of cuttings to decompose.

With such a large group of volunteers, the session finished up early, allowing some to leave and enjoy today's Hanwell Hootie.

We'll have another session with HANGOT scheduled for one of their June events.

Kash and Sevan ran to Hanwell Community Library, one of the locations for this year's Hanwell Hootie, to help set the scene. They didn't know how to turn a library into a concert venue. All they'd been told was that it involved hessian.

When they arrived, they found the crew and volunteers already hard at work. The stage was being set up and the bookshelves were being covered in lengths of hessian to stop beery hands from reaching for the latest Richard Osman.

There wasn't too much left to do. They helped cover 2 long stretches of shelves with hessian by using some giant clips, then covered a library computer with a "Live Life Oud" sign, pointing out that someone had dropped an L. Surely in a library, that must be some sort of crime.

The last part of the Antiques Roadshow Planting Trilogy (featuring the Snail Blazers and Plantum Physics) had no plants left in the pots.

The non-GoodGym gardeners finished the planting over the week, but the last job the rangers needed from us was mulching. But when to do it?

On a sunny late Friday afternoon, Sevan and Kash finished the Hootie setup task at the library early and seized the moment. They ran to Walpole Park - not to catch the sun after work like most visitors that day - but to do some spontaneous GoodGymming.

They grabbed shovels and wheelbarrows from the Rickyard and raided local woodchip piles in broad daylight to collect mulch, which they spread around the newest additions to the plant family outside the Walled Garden. Finally, the perfect stage design was complete! Their actions caught some attention of passersby, so we are hoping for new GoodGym sign-ups! 😉