Stairway to Heaviness

It was a busy morning in a coffee shop near West Hampstead station when a duo of black shirts ran inside. The barista recognised the colourful glasses and the red hair. "What's on the agenda today?" she asked. "We are going to help someone with packing again", Glasses replied. "Later another lady needs assistance with setting up her phone", Red Hair added. After wishing the barista a good day, the black shirts left the shop with coffee and entered an alleyway covered with graffiti that took them closer to Hamstead Heath.

With the coffee finished, the black shirts started running again, only to discover that the road was getting very steep. At the top of the hill, they found a neighbourhood of impressive tall houses and wondered if Mrs M lived in one of them. Her home was indeed big and beautiful but she didn't have anyone to help her carry her things across five floors before moving to a smaller place. Mrs M's husband had reduced mobility, and she was becoming breathless by walking up the stairs all the way to the attic. She tried to do a little bit of preparation each day, packing things and moving lighter items downstairs bit by bit. It seemed like a mammoth task as she lived in the house for a quarter of a century and gathered a lot of stuff!

Glasses and Red Hair started their work in the attic. Mrs M double-checked if they are sure about doing the task as some boxes were quite heavy - and there were dozens of them! She asked if they were frequent gym-goes and mentioned that her niece was a weightlifting champion. GoodGymers are weight-shifters rather than weightlifters and specialise in performing in extreme conditions like narrow staircases and slippery steps. Red Hair's mildly eccentric socks were not best suited for the surface of the wooden stairs - not to mention their ominous banana-skin-slapstick theme! Luckily, none of the GoodGymers tumbled down the stairs - they were too scared by the prospect of filling an incident report.

Most of the boxes were marked as "art stuff", "art books", or "sketchbooks". Mrs M explained that both of her daughters were artists. Other evidence of their profession were the additional things that needed to be taken downstairs: paintings, picture frames and portfolio cases.

Last but not least, a bookshelf had to be dismantled and moved from the top floor to the lowest level. The room, full of toys and children's books, made Glasses and Red Hair feel at least thirty years younger (the effect was temporary). The duo reassembled the shelf while bumping into objects that played jolly tunes when accidentally triggered. That made the black shirts feel like they were on a minefield!

Mrs M said that she was embarrassed to ask GoodGymers for so much weight-shifting but the duo reassured her they enjoyed the workout. She was very thankful for the help and offered Red Hair and Glasses water and kitchen utensils she was planning to donate.