Cardboard boxes

Well I hope Dig's learned his lesson. Never give cardboard boxes to children. Because this is what happens.

1. Squirrel wants a cardboard box to build a pirate ship. Dig gives her a huge cardboard box from the enormous pile that has appeared in the office (and which he denies has been filled with a new computer system). Squirrel manhandles the box through the doors and goes off to build a pirate ship with Tiger. They start to do this in the schoolroom. It involves waving scissors around dangerously and taping straws to the cardboard box. There is a fight. Tiger refuses to work with Squirrel.

2. Tiger goes to the office and asks for a cardboard box to make a nest with. Dig gives her a box. She takes it into the schoolroom and begins to wave scissors around dangerously. Squirrel, meanwhile, is howling in the front room.

3. I ask Squirrel what would stop the howling. She says her pirate ship has been taken over and she wants it back. I go to the schoolroom, extract the pirate ship and bring it to the front room. Tiger starts to howl because she wanted to put the nest on the pirate ship and now it is all Squirrel's fault. Squirrel climbs inside her pirate ship in the front room and starts to howl some more.

4. When Tiger calms down, she goes back to the office and asks Dig can she have another two boxes, that are bigger. Dig gives her two big boxes. She takes them into the schoolroom.

5. Shark has seen all the giant cardboard boxes and wants to make a house for the toy leopard. She goes into the office and asks for a cardboard box. Dig gives her a box. She takes it into the schoolroom and stuffs a leopard in it. Squirrel, still in her pirate ship that looks like a cardboard box, is sniffing quietly.

6. In the schoolroom, Tiger and Shark have a fight. I bring both of them out of the schoolroom where they are not to be dangerous with scissors. The schoolroom and front room are now filled with cardboard boxes, some with bits cut out of them, and some with straws taped to them, and one with a Squirrel sat in it. Dig seems to have emptied his office of most cardboard boxes, and is probably feeling quite pleased with himself.

7. After a while, Tiger goes back to the schoolroom to make her nest. She cuts a hole out of the side of a cardboard box. Shark then reenters the schoolroom. She sees that Tiger has cut a hole out of the box that she was using for the leopard. Shark is inconsolable. She thinks Tiger has done this on purpose. She wails, she cries, she weeps, she howls. Tiger leaves the room, taking some of the cardboard boxes with her.

8. With all children howling, cardboard boxes going to and fro, and Squirrel refusing to come out, mother opens a bottle of brandy. Dig, tired of all the demands for cardboard boxes, has strangely locked his office door. But Tiger now wants another box. Tiger is determined. Unknown to me, she takes my keys, opens the office door, goes in and asks for more boxes. Well I don't know if she is successful, because mummy Grit is having a temper tantrum, what with the howling children, cut up cardboard and nowhere to drink a glass of brandy in peace and quiet and she has started to throw some of the cardboard boxes into the yard.

9. Thirty minutes later, Dig comes in through the garden in his socks. He says Tiger unlocked the office door to come in, and then, when she left, thoughtfully locked the office door again, leaving the keys dangling in the door, so that from the inside, Dig can't put his keys in the lock to open the door. Having been locked in the office, he has to leave by his garden door and find another way into the house. In his socks. In the rain. By then, Grit has laid the law down about the boxes, finished her brandy and all is calm, excepting a few sniffles from the front room.

Now Dig, have you learned your lesson?