Lewisham

Mission

Weedy, steady go

2 GoodGymers made their way to help an isolated older person in Lewisham.

  • Beth Hoskins
  • Mridula Iyer
 
Sunday, 25th of June 2017

Today two goodgymmers Beth and Mridula (me), went over to Mrs J house to get the weeds removed from her backyard. It was lovely to see Beth again who is rapidly approaching her 500th mission. She gives me an inferiority complex for my paltry almost 50 missions but also goals.

We arrived at the house and knocked on the door. Whilst we generally expect our clientele to be over 60, we were greeted by a very young looking lady. Perhaps she's got an excellent plastic surgeon, I thought, or those click baits on the side of websites don't lie and you can reverse the effects of aging. Either way nothing works that well and Beth and I were confused. We entered the house and it all made sense! L was a companion for Mrs J and had bought her little adorable 11 month son R over to oversee us as we completed the task. Mrs J let us know what we were doing and R gave us a stern look and drooled.

Mrs J had a lovely garden but a patio that had weeds growing in between her paving stones which she wanted removing. Whilst some of the weeds were easy enough to remove, others had deep seeded roots, so we got to work.

Whilst we worked, I began to probe Beth for more goodgym gossip, but unfortunately the rumour mill was a little low on grist. So instead we worked and talked about her recent cycling trip, how much we seem to have an on off love affair with running. I wanted to bring up condiments (I found out she loved them just as much as me the last mission we did together), and the interesting ones I had tried recently, but I thought that would make me look a little too needy and like I was trying too hard. So I played it cool and may have tried to drop the word sriracha into conversation occasionally. Harder than it sounds and also there's no casual way to do this, as I discovered.

Beth and I began to remove all the weeds and Mrs. J came and gave us periodic advice. I never thought I would have a favourite weed, but many many gardening missions later I finally do. I believe the official name for them in speedwells but there was a 4 foot patch of it on the side of Mrs J's garden and the entire patch came out in one pull. Due my lazy but competitive nature I pretended it was a very difficult task that I had achieved with speed because of my industrious and hyper intelligent gardening skillz. And that Beth after her 400 plus missions could never do something like that. No one really believed me. It was oddly satisfying though.

In an hour we were done! Little R gave us an approval drool and a smile as rare a compliment from my parents. Beth and I were chuffed and went on our way. Me to reward myself with a hot dog, and Beth to her second mission of the day! You go Beth! Till next time folks!

Report written by Mridula Iyer


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Peter Van Tongeren
Peter Van Tongeren
Sunday June 25th, 2017 23:38

great writing as usual!

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