Rake it till you break it

Mrs E was enjoying watching World Cup when she heard her doorbell ringing. She opened the door to see a man and a woman dressed in black who were clearly from West London. They admitted they were looking for her house on the wrong street. She was used to that - her address often got confused with a similar one nearby. The guests didn't admit that was the second mistake that happened to them that day - they had a job to do for Mrs E and were desperate to appear professional.

The arrivals introduced themselves as Kash and Sevan from GoodGym. They were the volunteers Mrs E expected to come and help with the excess leaves in her garden bothering her this autumn. She pointed to her tiny front garden. Sweeping and gathering leaves there looked like a 10-minute job for one person. That was a test. Sevan, who didn't believe that was the whole task, asked if there was a back garden. There was - and it had more leaves than the front one. The second test Mrs E devised was giving the people from GoodGym a hoe for sweeping the leaves. Kash asked for a rake to maximise efficiency. When Mrs M returned with the new tool, she also brought her personalised gin glass full of refreshing water for the GoodGymers.

Mrs E returned to watching football. When she went outside again, she discovered two things: first - the leaves from the front garden were gone, and second - her rake now was two separate pieces. Kash claimed the wooden part was already rotten, so the tool broke apart in her hands. Mrs E didn't seem to be bothered too much by Kash destroying her equipment. She invited the team to the back garden, where Sevan and Kash found more leaves and another rake model. Kash claimed the tool right away, leaving Sevan with bagging piles of leaves and reaching for hard-to-access leaves in the flowerbeds with his hands. In retrospect, it made sense as Sevan enjoys his exceptional manual work and has longer fingers than Kash.

The volunteers stormed through the back garden, leaving no leaves and broken tools behind. Sevan moved the bag of leaves to the front of the house. Mrs E said her garden never looked so great! She bid the GoodGymers farewell and continued watching football that afternoon, while Sevan and Kash were figuring out what was the best way to return to West London.