When I arrived at Mr M's door this afternoon ready for some chair building, he introduced himself by his first name, and said that's what I should call him - not Mr M, nor Mr Surname, or any other combination.

He showed me the two (large) boxes in his somewhat narrow hallway, and asked how long he'd got me for - I said I was there to get both chairs built, which was clearly the right answer based on his gratitude and the promise of a can of coke at any point.

Fortunately both chairs were reasonably straightforward to construct, and had all the requisite parts, tools and instructions - not for the first time the constraint was the lack of space in the hallway, but after building chair 1, and moving this into Mr M's living room, there was enough room to build chair 2, which Mr M said would stay in the hallway for now whilst he made space in one of the other rooms for it.

I gave both chairs a quick test drive - the recliner (with built in leg rest) was remarkably comfortable...Mr M was very grateful for my efforts, and doubly so when I said I'd take all the empty boxes downstairs to his bin store. The cold can of coke was well earned.

A cracking evening at one of our favourite spots — Hackney Marsh Adventure Playground, which always delivers on the rewarding session front.

We had a nice little group run: Nick, Rue, John, Adam and Brad joined me in setting off from the Aquatics Centre, jogging up the canal in glorious evening light — about as lovely a warm-up as we'll get. We were joined by Chloe, Joke and Paul at the playground, and got a warm welcome from task owner Ange.

For the record: a Newham task, held in Hackney, with Chloe, John and Rue over from Tower Hamlets. Three boroughs, one sandpile...

The task itself? A mound of sand to shift. Not just any sand — this had been donated from the London Stadium long jump pit, freshly dug out after Saturday's Diamond League meet. Our job was to move what we could over to the sandpit part of the playground.

Cue a shifting and spreading production line: shovels flying, wheelbarrows trundling back and forth, and plenty of teamwork as barrow after barrow were ferried across, with only a small number of mechanical and loading issues.

A couple of surprising things - first, that the stadium needs brand new sand every single time — and second, just how much of it there is. But actually when you think about it, world-class long jumpers probably do cover a fair bit of ground, so the pit must need to be pretty deep to land in safely. A quick google afterwards confirmed it: a competition long jump pit needs somewhere in the region of 6–9 cubic metres of sand. Worth retaining that for when it comes up in a pub quiz.

By the end of our session, we'd made a visible dent and felt like we'd had a workout. Huge thanks to Ange for having us. And a brilliant turnout — it genuinely made the difference, because these tasks simply don't happen without people showing up. So thank you to everyone who came along and we'd love to see you all again soon 💪

A Monday afternoon visit for Mrs S, and it was a warm one in central London. As we ran down the list, she got stuck on the type of pasta that's a bit thicker than spaghetti, and between us we threw out all known variations of pasta until we finally arrived at linguine...thankfully the Waitrose at John Lewis had exactly what she wanted on the pasta front, and pretty much everything else too bar a couple of items - I was offered a glass of water with the recently bought elderflower cordial in it by way of post walk refreshment, which hit the spot perfectly.

A cooler Monday afternoon walk from Mr R's front gate to Tesco and back with the now very familiar list and reusable bag in hand - I played a little memory game of picking items without referring to the list, and nearly got a full house, just the tin of prunes caught me out...