Sevan and I are not new to this task as we had last year's experience. Wait for a car to show up at the front of the church. Carry bags and packages to respective tables arranged inside the church. For Beata, it was her first time, but she fit right into the task.

I took a side quest of helping an old lady post a story on her Facebook, after 10 minutes of struggle, we gave up and posted it on Instagram instead.

The weather was foggy but better than last year's rainy task. It was a chill morning and after helping out few charities take their bags to their allocated tables, the task came to an end. Sevan ran off to Horsenden for a few more tasks and Beata & I vanished into the smog.

After setting up the 2025 Ealing Animal Fair in the morning, it was time for donkeys, horses and cats to go home, along with the humans. In fact, many of the animal charities present at this year's Ealing Animal Fair were already packed up by the time team GoodGym arrived to help the organisers wrap up.

Everyone got to work folding tables, stacking chairs and clearing the kitchen of unwanted food. Madhan went searching for and found an unusual tool, a chair mover to relocate stacks of plastic chairs, putting it to great use to neatly arrange the chairs along the walls of the main hall.

When stallholders were ready, GoodGymers did the opposite of the morning's set up task, moving their equipment from the halls back to their cars to keep traffic in front of the church flowing. Leaflets, signage, merchandise and a lot of plush animal toys made their way into vans and car boots. Some organisations had more difficulty that others, having collected new equipment at the fair which left them with a headscratching packing problem.

In 30 minutes, the church had been cleared of dogs, lions and primates and it looked like... well... a church again, ready for services on Sunday morning.

The GoodGymers who had come to Hanwell Methodist Church to help unload the cars for stall holders in the morning were expecting to do the earlier task in the reverse order this afternoon. When they arrived, most of the organisations promoting their cause at the Ealing Animal Fair already packed their equipment into their cars or even driven away! Fortunately, there was still work to do.

Tom and the other volunteers were halfway through folding and putting the wooden tables away. That was a fantastic workout the GoodGymers couldn't miss! A less demanding task was stacking and carrying the plastic seats into the main hall - although one could scale that exercise and make it more challenging with more chairs. The next step was arranging 88 of the seats into 11 neat rows for the Sunday service at the hall. Why the mass was taking place there rather than inside the church building? In the winter, it was much easier to heat up a smaller space than the entire church!

It looked as if there was not much left to do until we discovered the kitchen utensils that had to be loaded into a car. Speaking about the kitchen, we have been rewarded with takeaway leftovers: sweet potato fries, baked potatoes, Moroccan stew, bean chilli, vegan coleslaw and soya milk. It was a lovely gesture from Marion and the people from the kitchen to offer us food to go.

On the way back, we noticed a man with Henry the Hoover. He (the man, not Henry) had to move fifty-odd folded tables across to hoover the church floor underneath. After we gave him a hand - or eight hands - we felt better about deserving our free dinner! Marion was very thankful for our work today, even if we felt that we wanted to have more things to lift. Four more volunteers at the fair made a big difference and allowed the event to be set up and wrapped up much faster!

"It is raining cats and dogs" was a quote that's used quite often throughout the morning's task at Hanwell Church. I already made up my mind to have a shower under nature when I left the house this morning.

I saw Kash and Sevan running on the other side of the road when I was reaching the task location. I saw Sevan and Bryon discussing with Marion, the task owner near a notice board which has the map of the church and the list of charities that were attending today.

GoodGym Ealing welcomes back Bryon to Goodgyming who was last spotted at Jenny's 500th task a year back

We were helping out Ealing Animal Fair, which is a yearly event that happens at Hanwell Church. It was raining cats and dogs(goodies) inside the church as well.

Marion assigned us to an unloading task. We were looking for cars that entered the Church like a hawk and the following sentences were repeated many times.

Do you need help with unloading? Which charity you are from? Oh, that goes to the Main Hall. This one is to the Memorial Hall.

Luckily we spent more time indoors than outdoors, in the wet weather, as we only had to pick bags & things from cars which were parked right in front of the entrance till we unloaded.

Tom, who was a regular volunteer/relative of one of the charity members thanked us, as he said he was the only person helping with this unloading stuff from his childhood. He was glad that now they got GoodGym support and enjoyed his coffee.

Elephant plushies, cat quotes, dog tote bags, marmalades, donkey mugs, monkey figurines, and squirrel keychains were some of the items that filled the stalls of different animal charities.

30+ animal charities attended this event

The event starts at 10:30 am and we had pretty much finished unloading stuff of most charities by 10:00 am. Sevan then ran to Horsenden Hill to meet a few more GoodGymers for another community mission. Bryon, Kash, and I stayed for some more time to see if anyone needed any other help. Soon Kash left for Horsenden as well. Bryon and I got ourselves the free volunteering coffee and then had a tour of the event.