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

Packing like Crazy

With the whole house to pack into boxes, pretty much, and Mum away, and with very few days before Mr Dempsey's big green lorry pulls up outside, we are packing stuff into boxes and sealing them with parcel tape for every hour that Dad's little leggies and arms can handle it. We break off every few hours for a respite coffee or some other distraction. Our problem is that we are very booky household, with an inordinate amount of books and paper-related, equally dense material (diaries, files, print outs, pre-digital packets of photos, magazines etc).

This is all heavy stuff even though Mum has pre-empted her own tendency to create massively heavy, monolithic, tea chest sized slabs of solid paper by buying on-line, a good selection of flat boxes just waiting to be assembled. This selection includes smaller boxes clearly labelled "books" to try to steer the packers away from the hernia-weight boxes, and Dad is sticking to those for the books.

This was a bit of an awesome task, so Dad has started in just one room, determined to clear its entire contents into sealed boxes before moving on to the next one, rather than fanny around indecisively prodding this and tinkering with that. In between bursts of book packing, there are opportunities to free up some more junk which can be carried down to the front drive 'free-cycle' point, Son of Junk-Pile 1 ! Today this method managed to clear the big computer desk (dissembled) and a dresser, assorted olde scanners, printers and computer bits, a weighing scales, some huge coffee table books, some gardening magazines, empty box files and lever arch files and other stationery.

It all goes, welcomed aboard by the good folks of Faversham for its 'onward journey'. Where to, we will never know. The desk and dresser, we know, went to two nice ladies who have moved out of a small 2-up-2-down into a bigger house and lack furniture; we know because Dad spotted them loading the desk and offered to help them, then invited them in to see the dresser and invited them to come back for it when he'd emptied it in 15 minutes (which they did). It never actually touched the junk pile. This actually came to us from Diamond originally so now it moves on to another phase of its much-recycled life, to another loving home. She will be pleased.

Now run out of enthusiasm for parcel tape, Dad is chillin' with a beer and supper.
Deefs

Something's up

Something's cooking at Deefer Towers. Stuff - long parcels etc - is being got down from the loft, and rootled out of the shed. Freezer blocks are being rediscovered in cupboards and frozen. Shopping is being shopped for - unusual stuff. And the surest sign that something is a-foot, Mum is drawing up "A List". Mum loves her lists! Any party, trip or special event can give rise to a list, sometimes a scratched one on rough paper, sometimes a poshly written out one on a clean sheet, and sometimes, like today, one keyed into the computer and printed out. Serious lists!

I have snuck a peek at the lists and I am interested to note that we dogs are on it - dogs, it says, and then food, bowls, collars and leads, sweeties, poo-bags, Meggie's tablets, water.....

What can it all mean? Watch this space.....