I lend a helping hand whenever I can.

Moving day sorts people quickly. Plenty of friends offer; three turn up at eight with gloves, and one of them takes the bottom end of the wardrobe on the stairs.

There is an honest limit inside every offer — Saturdays already spoken for, a bad back, a week with nothing left in it. Nobody helps infinitely, and the ones who claim to are usually helping badly.

What gives an offer weight is that it costs a morning you would have spent otherwise. Help that fits neatly into the gaps in a day is pleasant. Help that doesn't is what people still mention eleven years later.