Southwark

Mission

Pivot 2.0

3 GoodGymers made their way to help an isolated older person in Southwark.

  • Mark Gilyead
  • Kim Parker
  • Mridula Iyer
 
Sunday, 30th of April 2017

Happy long weekend GoodGymmers! This weekend marked my first non garden related task with Mark and Kim. Whilst I normally do a bit of stalking before I meet the fellow team, I couldn't this week, as I was too busy looking at all the awesome achievements of my goodgym squad. (Squad is a generous definition. I pretend we are closer than we actually are.) This weekend alone we had five half marathons (Gareth Grey, George Barnett, James Holt, Andy Lulham and Sarah Place) and a centurion (Ben Parkes). Nice work all of you! And if you want to meet the legendary centurion and also admire his voluminous hair, and get some styling tips, he's going to be running the Tower Hamlets session this week. Though I imagine he will be a bit sore.

However, back to the task at hand we had a chair to move for Ms H. Ms H is in her 80s and isn't able to move her very heavy riser recliner chair while bedroom is being redecorated. I immediately made a pivot joke, in reference to that Friends episode. As it turns out Kim and Mark had no idea what I was talking about. Do serious runners not watch TV? If so, you are missing out. That episode of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills where they all debate if $40,000 is too much to spend on child's birthday party, really helped me gain perspective on the whole Brexit situation.

We then headed in to get into the gate ready to begin our task. However, this is where the trouble began. Mark started by pressing the doorbell. The first time there was no noise. We assumed it was one of those silent doorbells. As it turns out it was not. We pressed again but whilst there was no response, we now heard a doorbell ring. We then decided to give Ms. L a call. As it turns out there was a key in the lock box outside and we should let ourselves in. Whilst the clearly marked lock box said pull, I decided to re enact the far side comic about the Midvale school for the gifted, and pushed. After finally getting it open, and seeing the keys, we let ourselves in and began our task.

Eager to redeem myself, and prove that my five year engineering degree was not all in waste, we were presented with a too small a door frame and too large a chair. Ms H gave us some advice and told us the back came off. Mark went to work to try and get the back off but his brute force yanking approach did not work. I came to his rescue and figured out there was a lever to release the back of the chair. Triumphant about my independent womanness, we took the back off, and pushed it over to the other room. We then pivoted the bottom half of the chair and moved that over too and plugged the chair back in and ensured it was working. Ms H also asked us to move a smaller bedside table and we did so with gusto.

Now my gardening tasks are normally much longer than this, and I usually get to know my goodgymmers better, so I can put the anecdotes in my report. We finished within half an hour, and I asked Kim for some interesting facts about herself. She looked at me with the same terrified look I had on my face, when my parents discovered the emoji's on whatsapp and asked me to explain what the aubergine meant. She then ran off to her second (!) mission that day. I did however find out that Mark lives in a houseboat, and is a jazz musician. Ask him more about that when you meet him next and whether his beanie hat is reflective of the genre of music he plays. I then went home where, I proceeded to let the Ivar cabinets from the good folks at Ikea turn me into a broken hollow mockery of the human condition.

That's all for now folks! Another day, another mission done! Till next time!

Report written by Mridula Iyer


Discuss this report

Adele Prince
Adele Prince
Monday May 1st, 2017 23:07

I *love* this run report, just the best.

Mridula Iyer
Mridula Iyer
Tuesday May 2nd, 2017 10:01

Thanks Adele! I shpuld be back at Lewisham next week!

Alexander Kenmure
Alexander Kenmure
Tuesday May 2nd, 2017 12:26

This is one of the best run reports I've ever read. Loved it.

Mridula Iyer
Mridula Iyer
Tuesday May 2nd, 2017 18:01

Thanks Alexander! This comment made me feel really good.

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