Packing Up

I swept the kitchen floor yesterday. There was dust all over it, and crumbs. And mud, probably. So I swept it, and felt better.
Five minutes later, I returned to the same spot I had recently swept, just as a dollop of “pug” splatted down through the hole in the roof, and landed, mockingly, right next to the bin.
I left it there.

Next weekend, we are moving out. All of the keepable furniture is going to be stashed cleverly in the one tiny part of the house that will be retaining its roof, and the rest is coming to The Shed with us. A few items were lugged down the garden yesterday, in readiness. I took a small book case, a telephone table, a Victorian wash stand and an Ikea all-purpose generic cupboardy-thing. In fact, I have taken most of the stuff that is made of wood – probably because it matches the interior decor of The Shed.
There are now places in the Funny Little Bungalow that look worse than ever. In what is our bedroom, but what should be the dining room, and what will be part of the living room, the multi-coloured mould cultures really are a joy to behold in all their exposed glory.

There is a worrying amount of stuff left in the house, though. Miracles might need to happen next weekend, when we stash and stow. There will inevitably be some sorting, and possibly some burning – maybe even some dumping. But it is frustrating, because last week, when Mini Seymour lay floppy on the sofa with her bug, I made some headway with The Dormitory. I organised all of the toys and tidied them neatly away in Boy Seymour’s under-bed storage compartment.
His Match Attax, the Hama Beads, a set of big-headed Manchester United football players, some Meccano, and the Monster High dolls were all tucked tidily out of sight. None of them had been played with in weeks.
Well, as I look around me now, at the very room I tidied, all I can see are the sliding doors under the bed open, and every single one of the aforementioned items now strewn gaily about.
This is precisely why I am not stressing that the packing hasn’t yet all been done. Because even if it had, the Four Little Seymours would have had everything we own back out on the floor in a flash, and I’d be in a much worse pickle.

The most concerning thing really is the clothes. There is no room for a wardrobe down in The Shed, and so, how this whole dressing thing is going to work, I really don’t know. Big Seymour has been on at me for weeks about finding some sort of box for each of the Four Little Seymours’ garments. My mind was drawing a blank, until I realised they could each have a drawer – just one drawer, laid out above the bathroom area of The Shed, out of the way of mattresses on the mezzanine. It’ll be very interesting to see if this is do-oable – I plan to conjure up a reward system for whoever’s drawer is the tidiest. Who knows? We may be creating a whole new minimalistic way of living for ourselves. Wouldn’t that be nice?

But maybe there is something even more concerning than the lack of wardrobe space, and that is the lack of internet. I have no idea if we will be able to use our devices at all down the garden, some two hundred feet away. What if I need to summon Tesco man? How will Amazon work? What about Sky? And the telephone..? It really is giving me palpitations just thinking about it. Without the World Wide Web, my blog will go unread, and those kind few of you who are interested will miss out on the next phase of this renovation – the phase I have been banging on about for months: the removal of the roof.
Yes folks, we are now nearing the crux of the build – the moment we have all been waiting for. The point of no return when we really do start to see some major changes here at the Funny Little Bungalow. Big Seymour will be morphing into Wreck-it Ralph soon, and, as he announced the other day, he cannot wait.
I have told him to be careful. There has already been one casualty. A faithful, much-loved hammer disappeared down into the wall cavity last weekend, never to see daylight again. It has now settled into retirement in the bottom of our walls, and will stoically form part of the structure of our house from here on in. I want to rescue it, but Big Seymour is philosophical; it’s gone, he says. I think he quite likes the idea that he is leaving it there for future archaeologists to find, should renovated 1930s bungalows with sixties extensions ever be of particular interest to historians of the future.

Exciting times are ahead. We are moving out (gulp) and big changes are afoot. We are still winging it, and riding on optimism, with the occasional injection of red wine and chocolate raisins. I shall do my best to update on our progress – somehow, even if I have to write to you all personally, and as there are only fifteen subscribers to this blog, that would be easy enough.
But, knowing Big Seymour, he will come up with a way of supplying the internet to The Shed, and then I can let you know if the eighteen days Big Seymour has allocated to remove the roof and re-build it again are actually enough…

Oh, I do hope so.