Relocation, relocation, relocation

Good golly, jeepers creepers, and stap me vittles! Moving house is hard work. (If anyone knows what vittles are, or why they should be 'stapped' please let me know). Los parentos are upping sticks and buggering off to France. As a result, the house looks like a bunch of chimpanzees have got pissed in a DHL parcel warehouse.

All the careful packing has been done. To avoid breakages, all the glassware has been melted down into hand sized ingots, ready to be re-blown on location in France. It has also been decided that it would be cruel to leave the cat to a local animal sanctuary, pining for it's departed owners. So we drowned it in the bath, boiled it up, and made a very tasty curry out of it. In a well crafted bit of culinary irony, it was stuffed with a tasty bhaji paste made from the goldfish. It's what it would have wanted.

In actual fact, the entire moving process seems to have started many years ago, when my mother placed a dozen paperbacks in a cardboard box in 1987, sealed it with parcel tape, and wrote "BOOKS DINING ROOM" on the top in black marker pen. It has since lain fallow in the attic, in readiness for the forthcoming move. In fact this is one of the few boxes that will be utilised during the move. I have suggested that it will be far more economical just to put all the possessions in to the back of the truck just as they are, and then fill the remaining space up with cavity wall insulating foam, thus securing the cargo for its entire journey. Items may then be chipped out of the foam on arrival.

Once this is done, the only remaining task will be to close and secure all windows and doors before lobbing a couple of smoke grenades in through the cat flap to flush out any possible undercover Al Qaeda extremists.

It is always handy to take a look at the whole removals problem from a different viewpoint. I like to see it from the point of view of the furniture. In 1993 I sealed myself inside a tea chest and spent 3 years in a secure container near Dartford.