More Packing

For Dad another full day on the house move packing. All the books are now boxed and various other bits and pieces have been boxed besides including The Wedding Dress. Before my time obviously (and even before Haggis's time) but we gather it was quite an occasion over in Dublin where Steak Lady had a hand in the catering so that the main dish was Beef Stroganoff. With a thing for blue steak and steak Tartare, Mum was piling in there before the meat ever got near the Stroganoff (apparently it was good stuff, Steak Lady tends to be in the 'Best Customer' lists of the local butcher, so they were well looked after).

So the piles of boxes get higher and the residues of stuff not yet packed get smaller. There were 2 brief diversions today. One involved emptying the big, half-barrel-sized terracotta pots as well as the actual half barrel, these being the three bits that are being moved. This made homeless a Brown Turkey Fig tree which is being preserved as a cutting/root stock in the hope that it will survive the emigration, and Acer (which they are not bothered by as it was never that successful) and a million tete-a-tete daff bulbs, which have been rescued and will also be emigrated with a view to re-uniting them with their pot in Ireland. You are not allowed to move soil about for bio-secutity reasons, so everything has to be root-washed.

The second distraction was for Dad to nip to B+Q to buy smoke alarms and CO alarms for the new house but also a big wheelie toolbox for the power tools. Yes, he has started to attack the shed! The shed, realistically is going to mean packing the tools and garden equipment and a few big, un-opened pots of paint, but junking the rest. The wood-used-for-tinder (small planks, offcuts etc) we will offer to the new owners, but old paint tins, rusty screws, old door latches and other scrap, will be moved to the tip over the weekend after the BIG GREEN LORRY has been and collected all the useful stuff.

And then there was the traditional hour and a half of Dad's favourite game, phoning utilities, insurance companies (I'm with Petplan, Haggis is more of a DBS kind of guy, both turn out to be brands under the Allianz Group), the tax man, pension companies, the Kennel Club, Swale Borough and battling through their labyrinthine answerphone submenus. Mostly he succeeded but Santander bank? Who designed that system? They need shooting.

Deefs