On a rather wet Good Friday morning Frances and Beth visited Mrs J to help her change her smoke alarm batteries, well, that was the mission brief at least! Having both got lost on our runs in the maze of the Croydon backstreets we both arrived with an overly red glow and sweaty sheen to our faces. Following a quick round of introductions with Mrs J at her front door, she warmly invited us in and asked us what we do with GoodGym; we briefly explained the concept and detailed some of the other tasks and missions we had both done in the past.

Mrs J first asked us if we could take some of her rubbish out to the communal bins that we had passed on the way in, following our navigational nightmare neither of us had clocked these bins so Mrs J elaborated on her description of where these bins were located along with the warning that these bins may be overflowing. We duly heading outside and disposed of her rubbish – despite the bins being very full, thankfully only a minor re-organisation of rubbish bags and a ‘small’ amount of force to a bin lid was required to fit in Mrs J’s rubbish too.

We headed back inside and Mrs J pointed out the smoke alarm that had been beeping intermittently for the past few weeks. She located a step ladder so that we could reach the smoke alarm, however, once up the step ladder Beth noticed that the smoke alarm had the note “Warning: battery not replaceable – see instruction manual” displayed on the outside of it. Instead of the planned battery change we decided to detach the alarm from the base and set about researching where Mrs J could get an identical replacement near to her (well once we had all endured a piercing three beep alarm thanks to Beth accidentally pressing the large test button!). A quick five minute search on Mrs J’s laptop and success – one store located, one smoke alarm model written down.

Mrs J then led us to her outdoor patio where there were pieces of empty foil strewn on the ground, she explained that she was using the foil to place food out for the neighbour’s cat as she believed it was being neglected. Strangely, yet rather endearingly Mrs J then mentioned that she was terrified of cats! Armed with a litter picker we quickly set about doing a litter pick and tidy-up of her outdoor patio area before the heavens really began to open. Mrs J also noticed that the door lock that opened up to the outdoor patio was very stiff so Frances set about applying the magical lubricated water displacement spray (otherwise known as WD-40), this quickly loosened the lock mechanism and had the door opening far easier again.

Our last job was to build a two-man camping tent for Mrs J that was not intended for camping, or for keeping items dry, but instead for the cat...we both thought this was a lovely thought especially since Mrs J was terrified of cats. Frances with her Girl Guide experience took the lead and quite expertly began the tent construction in the lounge out of the rain. However, it became apparent quite early on that this tent was going to be far too big to get through the door to the outside patio (and probably too spacious for one feline creature!) so we aborted the job on Mrs J’s instruction and packed up the tent as best as we could so that it could be exchanged for a smaller tent in the near future.

We had a brief final chat with Mrs J about our runs home before we said our goodbyes and wished Mrs J a Happy Easter. Original mission not quite accomplished, but a productive and fun hour spent with Mrs J.