There was a late change of plan for the GoodGym Hounslow gang tonight. Not only were we Ana-less, as she was off celebrating her birthday (the cheek of it), but our task at Chiswick House had been cancelled. Fortunately, Romina from Cultivate London had a GoodGym shaped task lined up at Acton Junior School…

… And the task turned up to be a load of cr#p!

Quite literally - Romina had a fresh delivery of horse manure delivered from our friends at the Ealing Riding School, and our job for the evening was to shovel the sh#t from the middle of the playground where it had been dumped, into sacks to be moved and used in the local community gardens.

‘Man-ure going a good job’

Armed with shovels, forks, buckets and sacks, we got stuck into that pile of poop, showed that team work can make the dream work, even if the task is a bit sh#tty! We manure-vered the mound, we dung deep and we cleared the school’s stools.

When Poo become One

*I need some gloves like I’ve never needed gloves before… * and probably a good shower when I get home. We somehow did a crap-solutely great job of moving all the poop from its pile into neat sacks of sh#t instead. Even with all the horsing around going on, Romina was amazed that we had finished the task. Number two? We were definitely her number ones here!

After a round of high fives and a ‘stank poo thank you’ later, Chris led the runners back to the pub for a well deserved hand wash, and some brownies courtesy of Will.

Poo-tiful work tonight Gang, well dung all of you, and a Happy-not-crappy birthday to our lovely Ana!

This report was written for you by Poo-cy Hill.

...midges.

A beautiful April evening, except for the swarms of midges, for GoodGym Richmond’s second Monday of the month Group Run task at our sponsored plots in Buccleuch Gardens, Richmond.

But I guess, particularly as this was a WWF/GoodGym ‘Workout for Nature’, we should embrace the midges and the less glamorous animals, insects and wildlife that are all part of the broad biodiversity and healthy ecosystem that we are trying encourage by are gardening work.

So let’s hear it for midges Chironomidae (Diptera): their larvae and pupae are important food for fish and other aquatic organisms such as newts. And the flying midges in their adult stage are eaten by fish, insectivorous birds, bats and flying predatory insects.

Enough of midges and onto our heroic humans Anita, Chris, Jade, Lucy and Suze.

Anita, Chris, Jade and Suze. set about sweeping, weeding and litter picking around all the benches and in the borders. Our weeding focused on weeding out unwanted plants such as ivy and also three-cornered leek (Allium triquetrum) which looks very pretty, like a white bluebell, but is actually a real thug, a non-native invasive plant listed on Schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act (making it an offence to introduce the plant to the wild in the UK).

Meanwhile Lucy, who had completed 16km of her London marathon training to get to the task, still had the tenacity to prick-out and pot-up a whole tray of salvia ‘blue admiral’ seedlings, before she headed off into the dusk to clock a further 3km.

Four Goodgymers spent a sunny Saturday morning helping to clear the outside area of Bedfont Community Centre in Feltham, so that it can be used and enjoyed by families over the summer months.

Centre Manager Carol and her partner and Granddaughter met us with tools and refuse bags. Three new friends of GoodGym, We all got stuck in straight away clearing the paving stones of unwanted weeds, removing litter and uncovering many a snail shell - at a safe distance from Lucy.

While we worked there was lots of chatter, mostly from Carol’s 6 year old grand daughter, who told us all about the animals she likes (snails and ponies and puppies) and by her reactions we learned all about her least preferred (spiders of any size). By the end of the 90 minutes we had helped to clear a lot of the weeds and Carol’s grand daughter had learnt 3 useful phrases in Spanish (with lots of practicing out loud) thanks to Luis and some help from Lucy.