Today's not so short story starts in early August when the skies were blue, and turning up for missions in shorts and a GoodGym t-shirt was the thing to do...Hilary and I had met Mr J's occupational therapist to hopefully remove a sofa bed from his front room. 90 minutes of sweat-inducing manoeuvring later, we admitted defeat - the sofa just wouldn't fit through the living room door whichever angle we tipped, turned or pushed it...

So imagine our surprise when this mission appeared, we both signed up and guess what...it was back to Mr J's flat to swap the sofa and the bed around, so that Mr J could watch the football on his tv from the comfort of his bed (we're sure there were other medical reasons...). Mr J was certain the sofa would fit through the door on its side, so when we told him we'd already visited once and failed, he wasn't convinced. But this time we came prepared...with socket set and spanners.

30 minutes later we had the arms off and the sofa successfully moved into the bedroom - truly a gold medal winning moment for Hilary and I, three and bit months after the starting gun had sounded on this particular challenge.

A quick tidy up, and an easy move of the bed into the living room and our race was run...well not quite. Mr J had said he was happy to get rid of the sofa completely, so we set about getting all the pieces down to the bin store (there was a lift, unfortunately only one person was allowed into it - but no corresponding covid restrictions on sofas...), and then we were really across the line.

We left Mr J watching the football from the comfort of his armchair, happy in the knowledge that when Match of the Day comes on later tonight he'll be able to enjoy the company of Gary Lineker et al from his bed (that sounds so wrong, but you know what I mean...).