This evening I met up with Fiona for a mission in Brent for Mrs J.

This was technically a repeat mission for me, as I'd previously been on a mission here two months ago. On that occasion, we'd been unable to move Mrs J's sofa because some extra work needed to be done first. Now, we were to return to move some furniture for her.

Meeting Fiona at the door, I was pleased to see that Mrs J recognised me (I'm useless at this, so it's a skill I admire in other people). After exchanging a few pleasantries, we got to work.

Our initial task was to remove an old, circular wooden table from Mrs J's home. This required us to first move some things around in the hallway, which we got through quickly. Part way through the move, we realised that the table was going to get stuck in the doorway if we carried on, and so snapped off a couple of the legs to help out (I'd like to say that we're just that strong, but truthfully they were almost broken through anyway). This made the rest of the job very straightforward.

Our second task was to completely remove the sofa from the property for collection by the council. Not realising that we'd be moving a sofa today, I'd left my trusty screwdriver at home, where it had decided to stay and not screw any legs off sofas today. Consequently, we had to just put up with them randomly getting stuck in doorways as we wrestled it into the hallway.

Rather annoyingly, most lifts are built with ceilings too low to carry two seater sofas or larger. Consequently, after getting the sofa our of Mrs J's home, it was an old fashioned job by Fiona and myself to heave-ho the sofa up one floor via a rectangular spiral-esque nightmare that required a 180 degree rotation of the sofa at one point - thank goodness it was relatively light for a sofa! Unfortunately there are no photos of this part as my hands were otherwise occupied. However, despite a couple of stop/starts, we finished up pretty quickly, if a little (lot) sweatier for our efforts, very glad of the fresh air from outside after we escaped the stairwell: truly, a stairway to heaven.

Our last job was to remove some cardboard boxes and some empty bottles to Mrs J's communal bins, in addition to the broken table and a dodgy chair. Thankfully, we could fit all of this in the lift. Even better, Fiona was happy enough to travel up in the lift with it all (that contraption terrified me - the doors were like something out of a horror movie!!). It was probably around this time that I cut my leg on the rubbish, as my body attempted to turn my horror movie imaginations into reality.

Jobs done, we made our goodbyes to Mrs J, who was very appreciative of our efforts. I imagine we'll be back to help out again after Mrs J sorts through some more of her belongings.

Lovely working with you, Fiona! 😄