Perhaps Mrs R has been watching garden makeover programmes during lockdown, as she has big plans to transform her front garden into something more attractive where she and her family can sit outside.

Today was definitely stage one of this process. Emily and I met Mr J (Mrs R's helpful neighbour) who explained that she wanted the existing gravel removed completely so that eventually she could astroturf the whole area. So armed with spades and copious plastic bags we got to work and discovered we could make good progress - our only restriction being how much gravel could be put into each black bin bag (which had a nasty habit of splitting when you least wanted them too...).

After about an hour of successful shovelling and bagging we'd cleared about three quarters of the area, hadn't found any nasties lurking below the surface, and used all the bags, and so it was time to move the gravel bags to the bin store area and tidy up.

We explained to Mr J that he should arrange a further mission to finish off this stage of the clearing, and then he and Mrs R would need to decide on next steps of the garden redesign...but it seemed to us after completing episode one that there would need to be at least one sequel before the great unveiling.