When I arrived at Mrs L’s house, Becky who joined us from our York Goodgym was waiting outside. Do not worry everybody, Becky didn’t run all the way from York!!! as she is back in Swindon due to Coronavirus situation. Next to show up was Ben, who works for the Council (and is Emma’s, our Swindon Goodgym Leaders, boss!!) who was going to help and importantly be responsible for taking the discarded foliage away. Finally Teresa arrived 5 minutes late but 25 minutes early (i’ll let you work that one out for yourselves). Thankfully the threat of rain earlier in the day had passed and we started our mission. Ben knocked on the door and after introducing ourselves to Mrs L we moved around the back to the garden which meant we didn’t have to go through the house.
Emma had warned us in the morning that it might be good to bring some tools as it might be difficult to get to the shed and also that we may need to make two visits as it was a big job. Thankfully that meant we had brought a tree lopper which proved invaluable. Our mission was simple: cut down and pull up some weeds outside Mrs L’s window. What could be simpler? Well……on first inspection there was no shed visible and quite a number of ‘weeds’. Splitting into 3 groups, I set about finding the shed on one side of the garden, Becky and Teresa attacked the weeds on the other side while Ben was responsible for cutting up the discarded foliage so we could transport it to the local tip. After about 10 minutes it became obvious that we would be spending a lot of time cutting the discarded foliage to make it fit in his van so Ben made a good decision to go and get a council Library van as it was a lot bigger. While Ben was away, more about that later, we finally found the shed, levelled most of the weeds and had a quick well deserved, runners staple diet, Club biscuit and Fruit Shoot curtesy of Teresa. Sorry Ben we only had 3 of each so a tactical decision was made while you were away!! When Ben eventually returned, he did confirm that he didn’t have to empty the Library books out of the van before he could bring it to us. Thankfully the van was big enough so we didn’t have to cut anything smaller and we were able to just drag and load. We were nearly there, with a few stumps left to remove and tidy up the slabs that had miraculously appeared in the last 90 minutes. We invited Mrs L to come out to her new garden, which we could see was a big but happy shock to her. It reminded her of what it was like before a family bereavement meant that it hadn’t been maintained for a number of years. At that point our mission was complete. Ben was off to the tip, Becky ran back home and Teresa and I had a lovely socially distanced catch up before we left. All in all a very satisfying few hours. Wim Away, A Wim Away...................................................................