It was a first time GG shop for Mrs G, and she was well prepared when I knocked on her door and she invited me in to sit in a very comfortable armchair for today's briefing. Inside a white envelope that had "£20 and a list for shopping" clearly written on the outside was everything I would need for today's mission...thankfully it didn't self destruct after five seconds.

Mrs G pointed me in the direction of her nearest Tesco, and I set off in the sunshine. I was back (not quite in a flash, but it proved a quick trip) with Mrs G's treasure in hand, and placed it on her dining table for her to put away. Hopefully there'll be more visits to follow...if not, I clearly bought the wrong rice.

It was two for one on today's bed related mission for the friendly Miss D - she needed her existing bed frame dismantled and removed, and a new bed to be built in its place. She apologised that she only had a small selection of tools for the job, but David and I reassured her we'd come fully armed on the hand tool front (a lesson learned previous experiences...).

Fortunately the dismantling proved straightforward once we'd worked out how to get the remaining bed slats out of the frame, and quite a few Allen key turns later, we soon had it all apart and taken downstairs out of the way.

We then carried all the parts for the new bed up the three flights of stairs, and got to work studying the not absolutely crystal clear instructions and sorting out a very large bag of bolts - but once we got going, it all seemed to fit together as instructed and it definitely helped having two of us on the task as more than once it needed one of us to hold the frame to be held in place whilst the other did the necessary Allen keying from below.

After a quick test drive to check the lifting mechanism worked fine, we unwrapped the new mattress and placed it on top, did another test to confirm it all fitted neatly together as instructed, and we were done. Miss D came upstairs to check our handiwork and declared herself delighted with our efforts. We took the old mattress down to her bin store, and left her to enjoy her new (and much more comfortable) bed.

For those of a certain age, the story of former England goal keeper Peter Shilton hanging from the bannisters of his Dad's grocer's shop in an attempt to lengthen his arms when he was young is well known...today Anne and I discovered an alternative routine that would have worked equally well, as Ms L had three really quite heavy items that needed to be carried down a few flights of stairs to be recycled.

We started with the heaviest, being a large chest of drawers, and after a few near misses as gravity took over on the stairs, we finally got this to it's final resting place after not a little huffing and puffing. A smaller but equally challenging cabinet was to follow, and then finally a "heavy" microwave, by which time our arms and fingers were reaching their limits and our arms felt about 2 inches longer - extra length sleeves for us from now on...