This morning I met up with Africa for a mission for Mrs L in Wandsworth.

Mrs L has a beautiful basement flat and an accompanying garden. Unfortunately, leaves tend to collect outside her front bay windows, which block her drain and lead to flooding. When Mrs L was more mobile, she used to climb out of the windows to clean it herself. Unfortunately this isn't an option any more, and she's also unable to climb down a ladder to reach them. This led to her calling GoodGym for some help, having previously had GoodGym runners over to do some other tasks.

Both Africa and myself had elected to run at least part of the way to this mission. I was particularly pleased with myself, having arrived at this Wandsworth mission following a long run from Liverpool street station (my longest run in 18 months!) High points of my run included that I saw roads called "miles road" and "mysore road" in quick succession, and that my maple and raisin pancakes didn't fall out of my hoodie mid-run in the way that my spare top attempted to. Good times! I'm afraid that I was feeling too smug about my pancake retention powers to ask Africa how far she'd run, but it included a run past Mrs L's road and so was definitely longer than it needed to be!

Shortly after Mrs L welcomed us into her garden, she showed us the bay windows to be cleared. Africa got stuck in straight away by climbing down a stepladder into the bay. I joined her, impressed and inspired by the lack of overthinking that went into it, and we cleared the leaves (occasionally chucking some displaced shale back onto the driveway).

In a matter of minutes, we'd finished one side and were started on the next (I'm pretty sure that Africa is a force of nature - she sweeps with the ferocity of a tornado. I'm also pretty sure that if I ever do the crystal maze, I want her on my team 😄💪✌️).

Having finished both bay windows within 20-ish minutes, we asked Mrs L if there were any other jobs she'd like us to do. She asked us if we could give the lawn a quick once over with the mower.

I have an unfortunate history when GoodGym missions are mixed with mowers (they normally break down - see here and here). My unfortunate history became an unfortunate present as the petrol mower failed to start (Africa thought that maybe the spark plugs had gone). Seeing us yank at the mower's start cord inspired a friendly neighbour to come downstairs to have a look (he also came to the conclusion that yes, it probably was the spark plugs after all and not our pulling technique 😏😂). Consequently, we had to leave the lawn until another day and simply chatted with Mrs L for a bit before we made our goodbyes.

Great working with you Africa! Hopefully catch you on another one soon 😄