What a start to the week, as Hilary and I supported and helped "E" in Hackney by clearing space for her husband, "J", of seventy years to come home from hospital and recover in more familiar surroundings

I'd had the pleasure of meeting and helping J and E a few times early in my GoodGym career and it made my day when I knew I would be back to their home, yet sad that one half was in hospital.

Hilary and I joined forces to move some cabinets and hefty drawers in the master bedroom so that, when (we chose to use positive language) J comes home, he will be able to get around without knocking into things.

Another cabinet reshuffle

It probably took us about 10-15 minutes to move the cabinets and drawers around - a bit of lifting, shifting and pivoting and it was all done and in one neat stack.

There were decades-old papers around which we had to hold onto and neatly re-file and we found random things behind the drawers.

We did a few more odd jobs, helping to move an old TV, re-homing the upstairs phone, testing the two downstairs phones and attaching keys to keyrings to give to neighbours.

It's so good to talk

It was clear as day that E was down about not being able to be at her husband's bedside. But the dark, cold weather and her mobility problems meant she couldn't be at the hospital as much as she'd like.

We talked, we reminisced, we even had a bit of a whinge. We worried, we had hope and we talked about the importance of health.

We were amazed that J and E had been married for over 70 years and didn't even know what the material was for this milestone. Diamond was 60 years so we couldn't figure out what would be more precious or hard. It turns out to be platinum

After around 45 minutes of chat we left E to get some rest so that she could have an early start to get to the hospital and lift J's spirits.

We're hoping that J will be home soon