Today’s mission fell on the day of the Russian Grand Prix, in which Finn, Valtteri Bottas, was on pole. However, Katie and I were signed up to clean up the lovely Mr J’s garden and so we turned up at Mr J’s at 10:30 instead, ready and raring to go at his garden!

Mr J has been finding it difficult to leave the house recently. He used to enjoy sitting out in his garden, but as the weeds grew, he simply couldn’t face going out there any longer. Our job today was to give the garden a bit of a tidy-up so that hopefully Mr J can use his garden more and enjoy some fresh air while the sun is still around.

Our initial thought when we saw the garden was “Crikey! Where to start?!” There were loads of weeds, and we weren’t entirely sure how much could be cleared in the time we were there. Luckily, a lot of it seemed to be vine-like and so we could clear a large area relatively quickly. The main drain in time came from the unexpected and very frequent appearance of both massive spiders and escargatoires of snails (and yes, I did Google to find out what the correct term for groups of snails is!) I think Mr J’s garden comprises the largest number of these per square metre than ­anywhere­­ else in the UK! Approximately every five minutes, something made us jump/emit a brief ejaculation of surprise (definitely not a scream) and take a couple of pictures of the latest terror we'd survived.

As we worked, Katie indulged my F1 habit and let me play Radio 5. We also chatted about Katie’s coach runs, which has been her primary GoodGym experience thus far. As I’ve never done any of these, it was interesting to hear how she found it and how much she values running to see her coach each week. Katie also briefly chatted to Mr J while he kindly prepared some refreshments for us and felt that he may be a good coach candidate for another runner. Hopefully another coach for GoodGym!

Finishing up, Katie spent some time sweeping up the patio while I tried to aesthetically arrange some gnomes and other ornamentals that we’d discovered in the weeds, including a decorative tortoise! We then got Mr J to pop outside for “the big reveal!” He seemed overcome with the change we’d rendered in the two and a half hours we were there and we were happy to see how much it meant to him. It was obvious from working on it that his garden had once been well-loved, so I hope he’s able to enjoy it and love it again going forward 💚😄💚