Sevan and Kash walked from their morning session at the Grand Union Canal to a familiar sheltered housing building in Southall to meet an unfamiliar beneficiary. Mr D had recently moved into the new flat in the estate, and shortly after, had suffered a fall, which rendered him unable to move freely without pain. A fleet of boxes with Mr D’s belongings, haphazardly packed by a moving company, was looming in the living room, with no one around to deal with it. Here is where GoodGymers came to the rescue.

Mr D had been clear that what mattered to him the most was uncovering an aerial cable and a TV remote from that mountain of cardboard boxes. Whatever Sevan and Kash could unpack and organise on the way to those two Holy Grails would be great too.

Kash started with unpacking what was in front of her - an open box with clothes. She helped Mr D put some outfits on the hangers and into the wardrobe, and others, flatpacked, into the drawers. She successfully convinced Mr D to say goodbye to two pieces of clothing in a state beyond repair. Sevan tried to persuade the gentleman to part with his old CRT monitor, but with no avail - Mr D believed he’d use the screen again once he set up his (currently broken) PC. Sevan then attended to other boxes where he found...

Books.

He then peeked into other cartons, finding food, kitchen appliances, documents, and...

Books.

As per Mr D’s request, he put the books aside, near an empty bookshelf. They needed to be carefully sorted thematically by their owner. Having scoured through the top layer of boxes and discovering more folders with documents, Sevan unavoidably came across more...

Books.

The pile by the bookshelf grew, so Kash suggested she could arrange the books temporarily on the shelving so that she could collapse the cartons. Mr D then would sort through the books once he’d gotten better. When Kash inadvertently mixed the Napoleonic Wars with the history of SAS, Sevan was bringing order to the kitchen cupboard by separating the 2024 meatballs from the 2026 tinned carrots. Such jarringly different approaches to history!

Sevan and Kash learned that Mr D’s passion for books and documents was linked to his work as a researcher. The amount of materials on history subjects, memorabilia, model kits, and old military surplus goods clearly positioned Mr D as a fervent history buff. It should not have come as a surprise that when Kash came across a box labelled ”four-pan set”, the carton contained...

Books.

To be fair, Sevan actually had found a four-pan set in its original packaging. No one managed to discover the TV remote control or the aerial cable, though. Mr D was very grateful for freeing the space in his living room, nonetheless. The gentleman was not able to pinpoint where the bins with general waste and recycling were, so Sevan and Kash had to leave the rubbish and cardboard boxes for the carer to take out.