House Sitting

Over the last couple of weeks, we have been unfaithful to the Funny Little Bungalow.
And to The Shed. For we did abandon them both gaily, to flee this half-life lived in semi-squalor.

Our neighbours down the road decided that they wanted to go off to Paradise, swim with whale sharks and scuba dive to their hearts’ content. And why not?

And whilst they were away, they thought it might be a good idea to let the Four Little Seymours and their owners, Big Seymour and I, move in to their newly-rebuilt and redecorated luxury adult gaff, with fresh paint on the walls, expensive tiles in the bathroom and carpets as soft as fresh fallen snow.

Now, I am not very good at refusing things. So when this idea was mooted a few months ago, I said “Oooh, yes please!” and decided to worry about the details later. After all, as they put it, we would be looking after the place, feeding the rabbits and the fish, and thus, doing them a favour…

But when the time came for the Seymour refugees to roll their Radio Flyer full of personal effects down the road on January the third, I was feeling less than enthusiastic.

OK, The Shed is a bit minging. It’s cluttered, small and has started to let the rain in. It has no bath, and when we do try to cook anything on the makeshift stove, the smoke alarm goes off without fail. There are regular, gargantuan spiders and the occasional slug who visit, and the carpet is looking like it has seen better days. It’s not ideal. BUT! It is our home. We feel comfortable here. We try to keep it tidy – ish, and not tread grot all over the place, but at least, if we do, we only have ourselves to answer to.

Imagine a hoard of excited kids arriving at a big posh house with an upstairs, lots of rooms, several toilets, a kitchen large enough to race in and Netflix, and the result is this; two broken decorative coasters, three wailing kids who just want to go home to The Shed, and a rather stressed-out mother. All in a period of fifteen minutes.
There were no toys. There were things to break. There were walls to mark and tiles to crack. How on Earth was I supposed to turn on an induction hob? And where oh where should I find the dishwasher tablets? Discombobulated we most certainly were.

As time went on, however, we re-learned how to live in an actual house. And after I had moved the matches, the firelighters and the naily kindling that were all within Boy’s reach, and the darts that he found far too easily, and once I had hidden the heavy glass soap dispensers seated threateningly above the new ceramic sinks in every bathroom, and the vase which could have easily fallen and broken the glass table beneath it, and locked the windows to prevent falls and put the keys where escapees couldn’t find them, and policed the use of the antique rocking horse, and tried to protect the half-done, intricate jigsaw puzzle from annihilation… we started to relax…

…until Boy Seymour fiddled with the fish tank so much that the pump stopped working, and until Little Seymour Number Two lost a glob of slime somewhere in that beautiful home, and until Number One had a spillage and until Mini Seymour brushed the rocking horse’s hair so much it began to fall out. And until I found a great big crack in the en-suite’s sink…

Boy Seymour turned eight whilst we were there. His cards adorned the furniture, and his presents bedecked the table. And eventually, The Seymours started to feel “at home”. We picked up several tips on how to kit the improved Funny Little Bungalow out, and we discovered the virtues of Netflix and induction hobs for ourselves.

On the day we were due to move out, I was on a mission. The house wasn’t too untidy, but slowly over the fortnight we had brought more and more stuff into it. I filled up my van to the brim, cleaned everywhere and left it as I thought the owners would like to find it. I was on a schedule…. there was no way I was bringing the Four Little Seymours back to the house after I’d been round it, tidying. So by 3pm, it had to be done.
Throw into that mix a summons to pick a headachey Mini Seymour up from school, and the need to write a politely-worded essay detailing the broken coasters and how the sink appears to have an historic crack in it, and needless to say, I was ready to drop.

And so, back in The Shed that evening, after a meeting about Number One’s impending French Exchange at school, I found Big Seymour hoovering like a dervish, sucking up cobwebs and dust from the roof, and declaring, once he’d finished, that he’d tidied up for me.
There are no words.

We have been back in The Shed a week now. I am slowly finding all the things I have lost through displacement and disorganisation. We have settled back in, and the normal routines have returned. And how does it feel? Well, apart from the regular bursts of frustration that THERE IS NO BLOODY STORAGE, we are home.
We love our shed. Which is a good thing, as the Funny Little Bungalow isn’t quite ready for us yet.