The task was simple; load up a pile of woodchip onto a trailer, unload and take out the chippings one mile along the path.

There were five of us with one spade, one coal shovel and a rake. So, Peter found Ellie and Lizzie another task which was to strip old paint off the rusty metal on a noticeboard, sand it down and repaint it.

Over at the woodchip pile we quickly realised the pile had gone mouldy underneath and as we dug, a dust cloud of mould was appearing. It did not smell the best.

With one trailer-load and a big rubble sack filled, we headed on down the path to rehouse the chippings, tottering past Ellie and Lizzie on their sign duty.

It wasn’t long before they joined us to pick up some extra paint and we might have taken a short recess to play with the smoothie bike, the child’s treadmill and some hula hoops (whilst Max enjoyed a cup of tea).

Whilst Ellie and Lizzie headed back in their tyvek suits to paint the sign with green hammerite, the rest of us went back to fill the trailer with the rest of the woodchip.

Max and Nicki did most of the mould breathing whilst Peter and I closely monitored health and safety. They finished, did a victory pose and headed home.

You missed a bit!

At the noticeboard, Ellie and Lizzie covered that final patch and were busy getting the lid back on the paint pot. Peter started putting all the scrapings into a plastic bag when a rogue golden retriever bounded over, ripped it out of his hands and proceeded to shake it all over the place.

Ellie desperately tried to grab the dog to save it a) choking on plastic and b) getting covered in green hammerite. I managed to extract shredded bag from the dog’s mouth and then it bounded away again like a golden hairy ball of crazy energy.

We were chuckling about how mad the dog was as Peter patiently started picking up the bits and dropping them into the chewed up bag. He’d been at it for about a minute before Ellie realised there was a huge hole in the bottom and it was all just falling out as he was popping it in.

With a new bag filled, our work was done!