This morning I headed to Lewisham to meet Nykolette (who'd just run the Catford parkrun!) and Mary for a GG mission.

Our task was to move furniture to enable Mr J to be released from hospital sooner. More specifically, we were tasked with:

•Exchanging a hospital bed in one room with a sofa in another

•Moving an armchair between rooms

•Relocating a commode to the room with the hospital bed

In case the suspense of the mission report is too difficult to bear, here's the summary: we successfully moved it all! 🎉😄🎉 (probably)

The biggest challenge was always going to be the moving the sofa and the hospital bed.

After being let into the flat by Mr J's neighbour, we worked out with the neighbour what needed to be moved and to where.

With a rough idea of the logistics in mind, Nykolette and I worked on getting the sofa out of the living room while Mary prepped the hospital bed ready for moving. This involved a small amount of pre-moving for all of us to whet our appetite for the main job.

The sofa itself was surprisingly easy to move compared to others I've grappled with, but was incredibly dusty (Nykolette spotted a handprint I’d left behind!) Also, at some point mid-move, the sofa decided to emulate a transformer and spontaneously unfold: I now know that it's a good idea to identify whether or not a sofa is in fact a sofa bed before trying to move it, if only to ward off panicked visions of sofas rising up against mankind 🤖 Once through the door, we propped the sofa up in the corridor and went to help Mary, who had been disabling various parts of the hospital bed like a pro.

Between the three of us, we were able to angle the hospital bed first into the corridor and then into the living room. This also involved some attempts with an Allen key to remove a wheel and the removal of a side support. A random component also decided to spring off the bottom of the bed mid-move. Once relocated, all of the electrics and a tube for an air pump to the mattress had to be reconnected, and the random component re-affixed. I was particularly impressed with Mary's ingenuity when she used the removed side support as a hammer to get the random component to stay in place.

In comparison to the bed, the sofa practically slunk into its new room: the only (small) issue was that we needed to briefly unscrew the legs to get it through the doorway. I sent a mental thanks to DFS for the ease with which this happened.

Primary job done, we quickly moved the armchair and the commode. It probably took us longer to decide which armchair to move than to actually move it, as there were three armchairs but our instructions only mentioned two! Luckily Mr J's neighbour was invaluable in eliminating his favourite chair from consideration, so hopefully we made the right choice between the two left :)

We also swept up some of the dust/debris from all the moving, and un-did all of the pre-moving. I don’t think we realised exactly how much we’d pre-moved until we kept on discovering yet another wooden chair that had been tucked out of the way! Unfortunately I realised after we left that I’d forgotten to check whether my handprint had been dusted away, but the fact that one day my prints will come off the sofa at least gives me a title pun! 😅

Before making our goodbyes, Mary brought out a card that she’d kindly brought along for Mr J so that we could all leave a message welcoming him home. I hope that he likes it, and that he’s able to enjoy being back in his own home soon! 😄