This mild autumnal night, I met up with not one, not two, but three other GoodGymmers to spring into action by moving some furniture for Mr D! I'd met Birchlyn on a previous (summer) mission, but was also pleased to meet Neil and Tim for the first time (although I've seen their names on so many run reports that I feel like we're old friends) 😄

Mr D is currently in hospital, and his care staff would like to release him home so that he can recover in more comfortable surroundings. However, to do that, space needs to be made in his living room for a hospital bed and a recliner chair. Our job today was to move some furniture to create this space.

The list of things that needed to be moved to create this space was incredibly specific. In short, we were to:

Move upstairs:

• a set of drawers;

• a table and set of chairs;

• some personal effects (including a lot of dvds!); and

• an armchair.

And to move within the room:

• a cabinet full of glasses;

• a small bookcase of dvds; and

• a small cd tower.

To try and keep everything straight, and knowing that my memory isn't the best post-work, I made a couple of crib post-it notes for us to work from. This is just how I roll. For the record, I'm also really fun at parties 🎉

Introducing ourselves to Mr D's wife and one of her friends, we quickly ran through my crib notes with Mrs D to make sure we were clear on what needed doing. The only real change was that the armchair was simply to be moved to an adjoining room instead of upstairs. Also the glasses had already been removed from the cabinet, which meant that my contact with them (which is inversely proportional to their life span) was greatly reduced. To be frank, it's difficult to express the depth of my relief at this, so let's hope this emoji helps 🤩

Having everything spelled out so clearly meant that we could rapidly get through the reorganisation. In fact, with the four of us there, it took less than 45 minutes to get through everything on the list, accept some refreshments from Mrs D's friend and even have our picture taken at the end of it! There wasn't even a hairy moment when moving the table upstairs, despite the number of patently breakable plates that were mounted on the wall.

Mrs D and her friend were happy with how smoothly everything went (and presumably the lack of breakages), and we spent a few minutes chatting with them before making our goodbyes. Hopefully delivery of the hospital bed can now be arranged and Mr D will be out before winter hits!

We turned up at Ms V’s expecting a relatively quick task, as she just needed help weeding her plant pots. Little did we know there would be approximately 1,000 of them!

Ms V talked us through what needed doing, and we soon got to work weeding, deadheading marigolds, rearranging pots, sweeping, and clearing up a mountain of dead twigs. We learned a lot from Ms V who loves her garden and is very knowledgeable.

Even working as quickly as we could, a supposedly easy task soon turned into a marathon 3 hour gardening session, but we had a lovely time chatting away to Ms V and the time flew by.