A Nightmare on Greenford Streets

For Kash and Sevan's second mission of the day, we arrived energised by some karak coffee. Mr A greeted us and asked us to focus on the small front garden, which looked pretty straightforward. We were asked to remove the weeds from the soil and trim a rose bush back quite severely. Mr A told us to look after ourselves when working around the spikes of the rose bush. Little did he know that scarier things were coming to stalk the streets of Greenford.

We were given a hoe, a rake and a pair of shears to get the job done as rumours of a knife-fingered killer spread around the area. We set to work immediately to try and complete the requested work and get outta town.

While Kash set to work on the rose bush and had the shears to defend herself, I worked around the obstacles in the front garden to hoe the ground and remove the weeds. Inexplicably, there was a shopping trolley taking up around 10% of the space in the garden and that needed to be worked around, but I was grateful for the potential shield to hide behind.

We worked quickly and as darkness fell across the neighbourhood. We kept an eye out for danger lurking on the streets and more importantly, heading for our position! As it got darker, Mr A came out to tell us to wrap up, it was too late to be on the streets. He'd obviously heard the latest news and wanted to make sure we got home safe. As well as Mr A's concern for our safety, his neighbours were also peering at us from behind their curtains, wondering what on earth we were doing and why we were taking the risk of being outside.

Undeterred, we battled on with the weeds. Mr A's security lights came on in the garden which both made us feel safer and also highlighted us to any potential attackers. Soon after, we had to don our head torches to complete the mission.

As we wrapped up, Mr A came to express his gratitude. He offered us money, a free bike and as a final play, some anti-bacterial gel as a thank you for the work we'd put in. As true volunteers, we said that we couldn't accept any form of payment, so we headed off, wishing Mr and Mrs A well.

Our route home took us through Brent Valley Park, which was very dark with barely any lighting. Knowing that we were still in danger until we reached sanctuary of Hanwell, we put out head torches on, ran all the way through to the other side and together breathed a huge sigh of relief when we knew we were safe.