A Tuesday night? A good deed in Hammersmith & Fulham? It was almost like the olden days; apart from that we all made our own way to the Church of St Michael & St George. Last time we were here on a GoodGym task was way back in deepest and darkest February - and somehow despite the light summer evenings, most of us managed to get lost finding the entrance! Lucy and Luke had done loops of the entanglement that is White City Estate by bike, and Arba on foot. A-maze-ingly, we all found the right church.

We were greeted by Andre, the gardener, who explained the task at ask - to move garden waste from giant industrial sacks into more manageable smaller ones, so they could be collected and taken away. Armed with black bin bags, gardening gloves and a plethora of tools, we got to work.

The A Team of Aine, Analiese and Arba got going on one sack; using ‘shear’ brilliance and an unorthodox but nonetheless effective technique with a pair of shears as chopsticks. Jonny, Lucy and Luke got stuck in with hands, transporting twigs and lifting leaves, which was going ‘shell’ until the evil snails 🐌🐌 starting coming out from their hiding within the moving mulch. Luckily for Lucy, her saviour Beth was able to protect her from the beast, and Andre was on hand with some litter pickers which would give a two foot protective gap between Lucy and any potential lurking molluscs.

This was Luke’s first Hammersmith & Fulham mission - and we got chatting about how we came to be GoodGymmers. From stories of ‘someone mentioned it at work’ to having a friend who was involved, and a couple of Google’s. Aine and Luke had both searched for ‘volunteering in London’, but the personal highlight was Analiese, who had googled ‘good gyms’ and instead of sweating away on a treadmill, was now being attacked by a TaskForce member with a litter picker of mulchy sticks and a phobia of snails. Couldn’t ask for a ‘Better’ gym eh?

One bag done, two bags done, and Andre kept coming with more sacks. By now we had ‘snailed’ the technique, and had worked our way through almost six sacks, before we had used up all the black sacks. A bin-credible mountain of full bin bags lay before us, and task therefore completed for the evening, and ‘mulch’ appreciated by the team at St Michael & St George’s.