Solar: A Space Wars story

This evening's mission introduced me to Vic and Ernestas, both of whom had completed great things yesterday: Ernestas had climbed Ben Nevis and Vic had completed her 50th good deed! To commemorate Vic's achievement, I had made her a Goodgym t-shirt-shaped lump of fudge, which she seemed to appreciate a lot! (For future reference, it is not the easiest thing in the world to write with chocolate using a cocktail stick.)

After finding somewhere suitable to lock up Vic's bike, we introduced ourselves to Ms I's daughter. Ms I is shortly to be released home from hospital, and needed some space freed up in her living room for a suitable bed. Ms I had drawn up a detailed plan for what was to be moved and to where, making the whole process a lot easier for us.

Our main task was to see whether or not we could fit a couple of armchairs into a shed that already contained 4 large solar panels (i.e. the title pun :D). We quickly came up with an incredibly crafty plan of attack: we would take everything out, put the chair in, and hope that everything else would fit back in again at the end. This is essentially the packing version of turning it off and turning it on again.

Unfortunately, even after taking the solar panels out of the shed, one of the armchairs was simply too wide to go in. Making the decision that one chair out of the way was better than nothing, we slotted the compliant armchair into the shed and turned our minds to the solar panel problem.

We realised that to get the solar panels back in, we first needed to dismantle a bracket from one of the walls to allow us some additional manoeuvring lattitude (preferably without pulling out any of the plastic rawl plugs!) Ernestas and I headed back to the flat with the leftover chair to get a screwdriver for this, leaving Vic to stand guard over the shed.

While waiting for Ms I's daughter to find the screwdriver (which turned out to be incredibly fancy and Dr Who-esque), Ernestas and I moved the leftover chair, a couple of small tables and some odds and ends out of the living room and into the kitchen.

Fancy screwdriver at the ready, I dismantled the bracket, managing to not drop the screwdriver until the very end. It turns out that when you drop a fancy screwdriver, some of its batteries like to make a bid for freedom. Stopping their great escape, I reassembled the screwdriver, leaving Vic and Ernestas to perfectly slide the solar panels back into the shed.

This left only one straightforward task: the removal of a small cabinet to the kitchen. This time, Vic and I handled the cabinet whilst Ernestas handled the doilies that had been resting on top of the cabinet. Job done.

With our space wars completed, we said goodbye to Ms I's daughter and headed out to check on Vic's bike where we made our own goodbyes. Prize for the best post-mission activity has to go to Ernestas, who is headed to Copenhagen tonight. I'm only a little jealous (maybe a lot). Hope you have a great time, Ernestas! 😄