We’ve come sofa and key’ve reached so high

I had arrived early for Thursdays mission, and sat outside Ms J’s house, having a cheeky scroll of the internet to the pass the time. A man on a bike pulled up in front of me; ‘Are you here for Ms J?’ he asked. I nodded, and he introduced himself as S, Ms J’s son. ‘I’ll just head up and get some stuff sorted and you come up when you’re ready’ he said, and climbed up the stairs to get into the property, whilst I waited for my fellow GoodGymmer.

There were a few choice words coming from outside Ms J’s from door. ‘Are you okay?’ I asked, and S explained that he had the wrong set of keys. The front door was double locked and he only had one of the keys, which was a bit unlocky. As he made a few frantic phone calls to try and source another set of keys, Tabitha turned up on her own set of two wheels.

The task might be over before its even started, I told her. S came down, and apologised ‘I’ve got to go and pick up the other set, so I’ll be about ten minutes, I’m so sorry’. No worries, we said, as it was still not even six o’clock yet, and off he whizzed down the road. Tabitha and I got comfortable on the pavement and put the world to rights over vaccines and experiences of moving furniture. We were just admiring each other’s matching scrunchies and face masks when S pulled back over.

Second time locky? There was suite relief when the door swung open, and we entered Ms J’s to actually get going with the task at ask!

The mission today was to move a sofa and an armchair from the upstairs living room to the middle floor spare room, to make space for a new hospital bed. A quick game of Simon says later, we were ready to give Ms J’s living room some TLC (Tabitha and Lucy Chaos), and S left us to it.

The two pieces of furniture was easy to spot, and we did peeled back the blue and white floral covers. We discovered that the sofa had inbuilt cushions and we were pondering how on earth we would get it out of the room, let alone down the stairs? Like magic, the sofa was actually two halves pushed together to make a whole - and the sofa-seat-sans-arm actually would be easy enough to move.

We took a side each, and after a jiggle to get through the door, the next challenge was down the stairs, trying not to catch the stair lift and then squeezing the seat into the spare room. One down, we realised that there was a reason the sofas had been covered. The old pleather material that the sofas were coated in had disintegrated, and we had left a Hansel and Gretal-esque trail of brown ‘breadcrumbs’ from the living room, through the halls and stairways. Sofa so good, and at least we wouldn’t get lost, I thought, as we climbed up to move the second half of the sofa.

The second piece came down just as easily (minus a moment where we couldn’t quite work out how we had got it through the doorway the first time), and a further dusting of pleather settled on the route. Time for the third and final, which was slightly trickier in that we had an extra arm to contend with, but having done it twice before, we slickly followed our trail down and managed to manoeuvre the armchair into the spare room, fitting almost perfectly like the last piece of a jigsaw. Success.

‘Crumbs’ we thought as we turned around and saw the flood covered in slithers of dark brown material, plus a few undiscovered items which had probably made a home down the cracks in the chairs. Having made the mess, we felt it was probably best if we cleaned up. Hoovers are perhaps a bit like showers, and you don’t know how to work them unless it’s what your familiar with. Well that’s my excuse, as I plugged in the vacuum and met up with Tabitha on the middle landing. ‘Um, how do you turn this on?’ I asked, prodding and poking at buttons and knows. Tabitha kindly pointed out that it was a carpet cleaner, and not a Hoover, and it would perhaps get the carpets sparkling clean but not help with our mess.

Another trip to the ground floor to swap one vacuum cleaner like item for another, this time, it was a real life hoover, and we found the button to get it going! We took it in turns to try and pick up the bigs bits by hand and to use the vacuum to hoover up the rest - it wasn’t easy, and we got a good old arm work out pushing and pulling the old school piece of kit along the corridors and the rooms.

Before long, the place was looking a little tidier. We pushed the coffee table into the corner, and there was plenty of room for Ms J’s new bed to fit. I took the vacuum back down and Tabitha did a final tidy, timed to perfection as S came back up.

He was mightily impressed by what we had done, and thanked us as we all left the property. The key to the task? A little bit of TLC!