Three brilliant Hounslow GoodGymmers made the journey over to Westminster last night to help transform a hidden little space tucked away in the middle of a maze-like estate. It definitely took some finding but once we arrived there was plenty waiting for us.

One local resident had invested in an impressive collection of herbs and flowers ready to plant - all very much fitting into the purple theme. After some careful positioning, it was time to get everything into the ground.

It wouldn’t be a community gardening task without the usual challenges: hard soil, a selection of “interesting” tools, the puzzle of making the planting plan work, and some particularly persistent allergenics floating around. But the team powered through and managed to get all the lavender, sage and thyme planted.

The result looked fantastic by the end of the evening, and the task owner was delighted — confirmed by a lovely message from him this morning. With a bit of rain over the next few days, the space is going to be flourishing before long: sweet scents, more flowers, better biodiversity, and extra forage for the nearby bee hives. All the good things.

Great work team!

There was something quite satisfying about Miss N's sister handing me a handful of pound coins to part pay for today's shop - I can't recall the last time I had so much loose change on me. A quick trip to Tesco to pick up bread, and then into the now very familiar Aldi for everything else - the aisles were quiet as was the queue to pay at the machine happy to take cash, so I was soon back again at her door, with just minimal change in hand...

A first for me today as Mr R asked me to get him a jar of capers - something I've never bought before for any other shoppee or myself - I forgot to ask him into what dish he intended to add them. I also wasn't quite sure where in Tesco to search for them, but fortunately they proved easy enough to fine and Mr R was delighted that I'd ticked everything on the list again this week.

The big news from this week's visit to Mrs S was she has some fancy new wheels which she invited me to inspect down on the ground floor - it's fair to say it's quite some machine, or to give it its proper name, it's a "rollator", with bigger wheels to helpfully (hopefully?) absorb the bumps. I look forward to listening to Mrs S's Jeremy Clarkson style review across the kitchen table after a couple of weeks of test driving it around the narrow lanes of Central London...

It's now a familiar route to get from Mrs A's flat to her local Aldi, and around the aisles to pick up what she needed this week - but even she was surprised that I was back so quickly with her basket of treasure. As always she was so very grateful for the help.

Mr R informed me today, after we'd had another discussion about the marathon, that in his school days he was three time sprint champion for his school over 75 yards (apparently they didn't have enough space to do the full 100...). I was suitably impressed, but couldn't help wondering as I wandered towards Tesco when the last time it was that Mr R would've shared this particuler piece of information with anyone - such are the unexpected joys of doing older people missions!