Alan and Kash shopped many times for Mr G as individuals but never as a team - until now! Today's special grocery mission needed two GoodGymers. Alan, as the adult, went to the counter in Chiswick's Sainsbury's to buy some contraband for Mr G - scratchcards, perhaps? In the meantime, Kash was to collect all the other required goods from the supermarket shelves before Alan conquered the queue to the counter, then meet him at the tills. Let the race begin!

Kash knew the layout of aisles with Mr G's favourites by heart - and firmly decided not to be distracted by the sight of pots of reduced-price dhal - yet, Alan caught up with her almost immediately. The only items in the basket so far were cavolo nero, savoy cabbage, breaded chicken breast, breaded cod and chicken & gravy shortcrust pastry pie. It was time to team up again.

While Alan, as the expert on locating Mr G's newest addition to the list, went to hunt down the Taste the Difference Scottish whole rolled jumbo oats (wow, typing the name of that speciality was tougher than 6 km of running during this mission!), Kash found the ready meals. With the protein yoghurts absent from the shopping list this week, the GoodGymers finished the shopping by grabbing a couple of tins of baked beans.

Busy day at the Soup Kitchen. Jacquie was in the kitchen all day(2 shifts), Nishy was on tea duties. Lunch was chicken, mashed potatoes and vegetables or vegetarian sausages with potatoes and vegetables. Dessert was cake and other custard. Meal was much appreciated by the clients.

Foreman Michelle's head torch cast a strong beam of light that cut through the darkness in Walpole Park. Her team of four plunged their shovels into bottomless piles of woodchip. The woodchip was to be spread evenly around the bases of oak trees along a path - or at least that was what the team believed in.

Two floodlights and five head torches seemed like a glimmer against the pitch-black night. But Foreman Michelle could see very well whether Alan and Sevan covered the tree roots with the standard 20 cm layer of mulch and whether the amount of woodchip that Steph and Kash loaded each time into the wheelbarrow didn't exceed the acceptable health & safety regulations.

After hitting the target of 8 trees mulched, Michelle decided it was knocking-off time. The team returned the tools to the storage, cleaned the wheelbarrows and set off to their homes for rest as the next day another work shift awaited at Gunnersbury Park.

As I was early at Ealing Broadway for the group run and knew that the local Tesco had a foodbank drop area, so decided to go and get some bits to drop in the Food bank box. The local Soup-er heroes always have a can-do attitude. As running, just had my hands, so drop some tins of soup as still cold outside and some milk as seems that they dont have enough milk donated. Well done to the locals for dropping food for those who are in need. Hopefully the person will stir up some good vibes with the soup.

As Sunday, normally have several community missions and missions, but today the mission I signed up for did not go ahead and the morning community mission at Acton got cancelled due to burst pipe. So after doing the morning run with new comers, it seemed logical to do something as did not feel like a normal Goodgym Sunday - lack of missions today. As I received my new litter picker, I had to try it out. This one is foldable and the end twists. So licker picking today : who was going to be selected between my 2 litter pickers? Picked up some rubbish for the black bag and 1 full recycling bag. A lot of boxes laying around in the neighborhood and some people are really not bothered putting stuff in the bin even if centimeters away from it like the sauce near the bin container i put the rubbish in(see pictures). Delivery boxes went straight into the recycling bins. The new one has an advantage of folding so easy to put in rucksack.

GoodGym Ealing's latest visit to Care 4 Calais had them working through a familiar set of tasks, which they've been building experience in over the past few months. By the end of the task:

• 🛍️ A stack of clothing bags were created, ready for delivery to Care 4 Calais' beneficiaries;
• 👞👚 -> 📦 Shoes and women's clothes donations had been sorted and stored;
• 👟👟 2 identical right shoes were found. Only the task owner's sharp eyes realised that it was a wrong pair of shoes

Earlier, the team had helped bring new, very cold, donations inside to sort through. Once they (the clothes) defrosted, Kash, Paul and Mohamed got to work, first sizing the shoes that had been received, then separating the clothes into men's, women's and children's piles. The majority of the new clothes were for women which Mohamed and Kash stayed to do the next round of sorting on. T-shirts, legs and warm top categories were broken down by sizes from XS to XL. There were donations of Indian clothes as well as some from a mosque, so Kash learned from Mohamed how to identify abayas from non-abayas.

In the packing area, Paul and Sevan had created new standard packs for small and large men. No new packs for medium men today as clothes stocks in their size were low. The pair then moved on to fulfilling specific requests, with Sevan hunting in the stock rooms for children's school clothes for the first time. The completed bundles of clothes kept increasing and Paul neatly organised them by destination.

Any unsorted donations were left for the next volunteers to pick up and clothes that wouldn't be needed for a few months were packed into suitcases to go into storage. Kash was sent away with the suitcases. She may or may not make it out of storage for the next group run to Walpole Park on Tuesday.