Sadly Ms D's lottery ticket didn't win her the big one last week, so it was the usual list to hunt down in the world's politest supermarket today - she did give me £2 to buy her another ticket for this week so...otherwise all went smoothly around the aisles, and in fact it was a reduced list as Ms D was still working her way through last week's treasure - lots of 2's and 3's of the things she needed, which made things quick and easy, and gave us time for a good post shop catch up.

It was the Gang of Four who pitched up at the Hackney adventure playground this evening to see what Ange had in store for us. Early arrivers Paul and I were delighted to see that the remaining tree trunks that we had shifted during our last visit had now all been moved, so we thought it was unlikely we were going to be in for another session of heavy lifting…and so it proved, as Ange pointed to yet another large mountain of bark and wood chipping by the entrance and said she’d like it moved to the far corner under one of the A frames to provide a soft landing for any young aspiring circus acrobats.

With each of us armed with wheelbarrow and shovel, we got to work loading, walking, emptying into mounds, and retracing our steps for more of the same, but helpfully accompanied by an eclectic playlist of tunes blasting out from the speaker near the shed, which definitely kept us moving. Whoever was in control of this evening's playlist is definitely missing a trick as a part time DJ at the weekend...or as the next Joe Wicks.

With darkness now fully set in, Team Leader Graham gave us a call of “5 minutes more” (or two more wheelbarrow trips), and once done we parked the ‘barrows, tidied up the spades, leaving just a small pile of woodchip still to be distributed, and bade Ange farewell. A short group run back to the Olympic Park, and another highly satisfying and productive evening at the playground was complete for another week.

I was very glad Mr J's occupational therapist/referrer was on hand to lend a hand on this one, as it proved to be a classic old school heavy leather 3 seater sofa with no removable parts or cushions - and so the only way we were going to remove it from his living room to give Mr J more space, was to put a knife to the leather to get the padding out, and make the whole item lighter, smaller and a bit more manoeuvrable - but also to be able to look inside the frame to see if it would come apart.

I've never (literally) butchered anything before, but with a sharp knife in one hand and a lot of determination, it felt as if I could've been on the farm...thankfully without all the mess. Once we'd got all the padding out, it was apparent (in spite of there being many bolts) the frame was glued/nailed together (and not designed to come apart) and we weren't going to achieve much further destruction unless we took a saw or hammer to it - at which point we decided we could shuffle/lift the sofa through the doors, Mr J's hallway and into the lift.

Six floors later (thanks lift), we had it on the ground floor, and with one final heave we parked it outside the bin area ready for collection. Cue huge sighs of relief all round.