A real pane in the grass

Tonight's mission for Mrs J in Brent was the first time I'd ever met Scott. Coincidentally, tonight's mission was also the first time I've ever inflicted damage on someone straight off the bat (well, technically straight off the glove (see below)). Sorry about that, Scott! 😅

On paper, our assigned tasks weren't that hazardous: we were to move a sofa into an oversized closet and mow Mrs J's lawn. This should help her navigate around her home more safely, as her arthritis restricts her mobility.

So, task number 1 - moving the sofa. This turned out to be a no-go: After being welcomed into Mrs J's home, we realised that there really wasn't enough space in the cupboard for the sofa until a lot of other things had moved. As Mrs J wanted to sort through this herself, Scott and I moved onto task number 2; mowing the lawn.

Task number 2 also turned out to be a no-go: The mower had accidentally gotten itself lost in a "safe space" (a Bermuda-triangle-esque space found in most homes, but only under blue moons), and the newly bought strimmer cable wouldn't fit the strimmer. Technically, there was also something dodgy going on with the catch on the cable housing, but this seems like a moot point since the cable didn't fit anyway. Mrs J said that she would buy a new strimmer to replace it for a future task.

So, we moved onto (sort of) new territory with task number 3; weeding Mrs J's patio and raking up the grass. Being the über helpful person that I am, I offered Scott his choice of my gardening gloves before he started raking the garden. This act of kindness did not go unrewarded, as the universe made him pick the gloves that still had thorns in them from a previous gardening mission (he felt, rather than saw the thorns, and abandoned the gloves at the 2nd or 3rd prick 😅), leaving me with the normal gloves. Nice work, universe 😄👍

Carrying on with the task, we were both amazed at the eclectic selection of debris that we found while raking the garden, my personal favourites being a kinder egg toy (still in the plastic egg), a Powerpuff girl toy and a "winner" medal. Each of these discoveries felt like the garden rewarding us for our work!

What was not a reward, however, were the diamond-like glass fragments densely populating a corner of the garden. According to Mrs J, these originated from a broken window from an upper-floor neighbour. Double-gloving it (thorns included), we tried to remove some of them from the grass so that any GoodGymmers going back to strim the lawn are less likely to have glass pieces fly up at them. As the pieces of the window pane had broken into carat-sized pieces, they were (appropriately enough) a real pain to gather up.

After collecting around 4 bags of grass and debris, we finished off by making our goodbyes to Mrs J and taking the bags (and a few other bags of rubbish that Mrs J had) to the communal bins.

It was great working with you, Scott; I'm definitely going to check out more Boyzlife dances on YouTube. It may even replace cats on treadmills as my favourite video category! 😄👍