Four GoodGymmers made their way (some with a further run than others) to the home of Mr R who wanted some help with decorating his living room. It was a lovely sunny and crisp start to Sunday, ideal for a run.

We knocked on Mr R’s front door and when he opened it up he said ‘wow, I’m impressed with the attendance’ as he thought only two runners were turning up and he was a tad concerned we wouldn’t all fit in his living room. We assured him we would squeeze in and get the job done for him. Ellen having ran to help Mr R on a previous occasion introduced the rest of the gang to Mr R and them to him.

Mr R showed us to his living room and explained that he would like the wall between the dado rail and skirting board painting. He had the paint and brushes all ready to go. We set about moving the furniture so that we could get to the walls. On moving one of the sofas we had to disturb Mr R’s elderly cat who looked at us pretty unimpressed we had come along to ruin her Sunday morning chill time. On her previous visit to Mr R, Ellen along wih Mikey, had hung some new curtains in the living room so we were sure to move them out of the way by hanging them over the rail. Ellen was very relieved! With the furniture moved, bin bags and old clothes donned and newspaper laid on the floor we were ready. Darren revealed he had come prepared with rollers and some masking tape – top marks for organisation. Ben and Lucy applied the tape on the plug sockets and along the skirting board while Darren got rollering one wall with Ellen on the large brush on the opposite wall. Ben was soon coming up with puns galore including ‘I’m on a roll’ whilst standing on a roller (see the attached photo). After a surprisingly short amount of time, we were ready to move onto the wall with the big bay window. Unsure how to pin up the net curtains to avoid them getting paint on them, Lucy’s hair bobble came to the rescue and was promptly removed from her hair and placed around the net curtain to hold it out of the way. The extra light flooding the room now made it easier to see the bits of wall that needed going over to get a more even cover and Darren set to work on this. It was a tight squeeze to all fit into the spaces between the furniture in the middle of the room and the walls and there were some interesting dance moves from Ben and Darren as they attempted to swap sides with each other. At one point Lucy was knelt down painting only to look up and find Ellen’s lovely bottom right in her face – safe to say we all got to know each other well.

With the painting complete, Ellen collected up all of the newspaper and Ben removed the tape. Darren and Lucy moved the furniture back into the original positions being very careful not to touch the freshly painted walls. Mr R said he would put the curtains back down himself later and remarked that he really liked the colour of the paint. We asked Mr R to take a couple of photographs of us altogether which he very willingly did. Whilst moving some of his possessions before we started painting, Ben had found a photograph of an athlectics team from the 1960s. Intrigued as to whether Mr R was former runner, Lucy asked him if he was in the picture. He confirmed he used to run for Middlesex and was a very quick mile sprinter in his day. What a shame there was no GoodGym then, Mr R would have been a great member. He had a good chat with us about GoodGym and what we do and said he thinks it’s such a ‘magic’ concept and said how grateful he was for our help.

Before we left, Mr R asked us if we would like a Bucks Fizz to celebrate our great work and his new look living room. Ben, Ellen and Lucy quickly accepted the kind offer whilst Darren piped up with ‘I’m still making my mind up’ – great pun work there. He did decide to join us so we moved to the kitchen, said a quick ‘cheers’ and enjoyed our bubbles.

With the job done and drinks enjoyed, we bid farewell to Mr R and told him to let GoodGym know if we can help him with anything else in the future. With the sun still shining outside we said goodbye and ran off home in our separate directions.