Paul and I battled different routes from Saturday morning's group run, around the St Pauls Carnival, to reconvene in Horfield at Mrs K's who introduced us to her rather wild looking garden and her garden shed which looked like it might just have the equipment to do the tidy up required in the form of a petrol lawn mower and strimmer.

Perhaps the best word to describe these two items of equipment would be "temperamental" with the emphasis on the mental!

It sounded as though Mrs K's neighbour had put a weird mix of petrol and oil into the mower which started by coughing and spluttering into life, quickly followed by a full blown smoke!

Whilst I became accustomed to the odd ways of said instrument, Paul tried to coax some life out of a petrol strimmer, demonstrating the patience of a saint in determining the right amount choke to use to keep the thing running.

Adopting a "let your equipment know you love it" approach we managed to get the rather wild grass cut and strimmed to a more manageable level and attacking the rest, including some pesky brambles around the edges of the garden, with some shears we were done in a couple of hours.

All the while, the noises emanating from the neighbouring properties, were letting us know that England were tidying up on another patch of grass in Russia, which helped us in our travails.

And then for our nice little ending to today's mission. Inviting us into the house for a cool drink, Mrs K introduced us to her 8 week old Golden Retriever puppy called Amy, who was the sweetest mission reward ever! Well worth missing the footie for!!