Too much stuff

Apparently, the sales are on. No, people, we all have too much STUFF. And all day long I've been moving it. Dig's scarpered to the office and locked the door. Squirrel's detected something going on and has started piling her treasures under her chair in the kitchen. By evening there's a chair mounted on top of a pile of Squirrel Stuff. The only lights in this dark day are Shark and Tiger. Chasing each other around the house means they haven't noticed what's going on. 'Can you see I'm busy?' I shout, at half-past midday, dressed in my pyjamas, pulling a double mattress to the front room upstairs, in response to an irritating question about whether I can attend to Squirrel's bottom. 'She has my parrot!' screams Tiger, chasing Shark down the stairs.

I am attempting, without help, to bring about The Great Plan. We live in a Victorian house divided into flats on three floors. We own the flat on the top floor, and we own the flats on the ground floor. We live on the ground floor and usually rent out the top floor. But not any longer. We're moving upstairs. But only for night-times. During the day, we'll be on the ground floor and have conventional bedrooms upstairs, like everyone else. Only they'll be in different flats. This is going to be interesting, this split-level living. I think we're still in dispute with the council who say we can't live in two ground floor flats simultaneously. 'I sleep in one flat and shower in another' I tell the council. 'Not possible' they answer. Do they need to catch up.

The only troubling bit of all this planning is that we don't own the flats on the middle floor, although we've tried to. The middle floor is where Mr Pod and Pastry live. Mr Pod's pushed off to Australia to watch the cricket, and Pastry's gone north. Apart from us, the house is empty. It's an ideal time to drag beds up and down the stairs, shout and crash around, rearrange the furniture, pile boxes against the front door and generally create mayhem. Only trouble is, it's only me doing it.

By evening, I've moved a double bed to the upstairs front room and cleared out some of the childrens toys to their new bedrooms. I've decided they have too much stuff. Tomorrow, I'm hitting the freecycle button. If Shark and Tiger don't notice the movement of beds and bookcases, I wonder if they'll notice their baby toys in plastic sacks in the hall?