There's been a theme this week of suppliers failing to deliver the correct items to our beneficiaries (see armchair mission for Mr G of earlier this week). Only as I put the two halves of the divan base together on the floor (whilst following the instructions...) did it become apparent that the two halves were mismatched - one had plastic locking brackets, and one had a metal bar/pin mechanism, and so it was impossible to lock the two parts together.

I explained all this to Ms S, who said she'd go back to the supplier, but in the meantime was keen that I "made her bed" so that she at least had somewhere to sleep on. I told her that if she was successful in getting a correct replacement half that would fit properly with the other, then GoodGym would happily return to complete the task.

One of the most comfortable "furniture building" missions ever completed as the item in question (a rack for Miss V's CDs) was compact (...!) and I had a chair and table to work on, whilst Miss V watched TV. I soon had it completed and ready to be filled with music and so Miss V and I had a long chat about other tasks that GoodGym could do for her before I left her to rack up.

The sardine shelves were completely bare at M&S this afternoon - I'm sure there are reasons that people far smarter than I can explain. Fortunately everything else was gettable at the usual haunts for Mr T and I was soon back at his with trolley in tow. We sat to watch the snooker whilst putting the world to rights for another week, and just as I was leaving he kindly handed me a bag of potatoes and carrots - another good friday indeed.

The usual routine this morning with Mrs S, although she was keen to hear how the running adventure had been on Sunday. She set me a challenge of trying to find a Kohlrabi, and if anywhere was going to stock it, the world's politest supermarket had to be a safe bet...but no, out of season apparently.

Just as I was heading out of the Brunswick Centre my phone rang - Mrs S had forgotten to include a big box of Yorkshire teabags on her list, so I did a speedy U-turn (non Japanese style...) to pick one up, and before long I was back in her kitchen unpacking her treasure for another week.

A return visit to Miss N, who wanted me to go to a Turkish foodstore on the Edgware Road to get a few "Mediterranean items", before heading on to Lidl - including "Pearl Rice", which (in hindsight foolishly...) I thought would be easy to find.

Upon arriving at the shop, and navigating the narrowest of narrow aisles, I found myself in the dried goods section confronted with the biggest selection of Rice I've ever seen...but not one bag was actually called Pearl, so I had to ring Miss N to check exactly what she wanted.

After a quick conversation with one of the shop assistants, we settled on Declan's Italian midfield cousin - fortunately when I got back to Miss N and produced the rice she was delighted with the selection.

David and I arrived at Mr G's ready for a bit of furniture construction - Mr G showed us a very large cardboard box and explained this was a reclining armchair - the box stated that it weighed 45kg, so we were on the cautious side when it came to lifting it and removing the contents.

In spite of reading the (sparse) instructions on how to attach the base and back together, and peering in all the parts of the base, we couldn't find the important wires that would allow the base to connect to the back section, or to allow connection of the remote control. We explained all this to Mr G, and said he should contact the supplier to explain to them these critical wires were seemingly missing and that the chair wouldn't function properly without them.

Mr G was happy though for us to attach the back and base together, such that he would still have an armchair, albeit one without all the functionality it was meant to have. He then asked if we could also build a desk chair for him, which we were more than happy to do - even though this one had even sparser instructions, and one page completely missing! Fortunately no wires were required on this one just lots of turns of an Allen key, and we soon had it completed.