Life goes on........

But we have the books. I have been through the boxes once since we have been here and removed some that we wanted. Some boxes remained unopened. These were the ones that contained the books that were on the bottom shelves in the bookshelves in the hallway – and upon which our boy cat Bill urinated almost daily for about 7 years.

These were reduced to stinking piles of sodden sludge and I really did mean to throw them out but by the time I went to do this the packing man had packed them.

Leaping Llamas! What was he thinking when he picked up these dripping pieces of stinking, steaming goo and slithered them into the book boxes. Did he really think we wanted them? What was he thinking when he did this? Did he go to the truck and get his Kevlar gloves?

I mean these books were so toxic they could put them in cruise missiles and drop them on Gadhafi. That would bring him to his senses. Allah why are the fiendish Infidels doing this! WTF is this poisonous  muck anyway? Abdul – eat some of this and see what it does! Please Colonel…..no

OK I know what you are thinking. Why had I not thrown then away long before this. Simply – dear reader – because Billy would then have moved on to another row of books.  As it was – we sacrificed a row of books – one a pictorial history of Hitler’s early career – another Old Mills of English Waterways -  for the sake of preserving many others more precious to us.

I did not ask packing man why he had decided to do that. But I have learned that packing men will pack anything and everything - and not necessarily in any particular order or for any particular reason. The are told to pack. They pack. When the have packed everything they can see they leave.

If for example packing man is packing the books in the hallway and he needs something to fill the box - he might pop into the study and grab the keyboard from my desktop PC and put that in there.

When I am unpacking in Vienna it may take me so long to find that keyboard – because it is in a box with books that went straight to the basement – that I have to be sedated and put to bed with a cold towel on my head. I can assure you that no matter how hard you try and how hard you sob – a PC with a screen and mouse but no keyboard is not worth a pinch of Pelican poo.

And when I say bed I mean mattress because the bolts for the bed were not with the bed ends – they were somewhere else entirely and took some time to find.

There is also so much other shit in the basement that it makes me want to weep. There are towels so old and threadbare that they look like they came from one of the famous 5 star hotels that I choose so badly and so often.

A few months ago we went native and moved to this crazy Austrian system of having two smaller Duvets instead of one large one.  I don’t know why the Austrians do this but we have never been able to get it to work for us and spend our nights tangled in these stupid things and keep pinking shears by the bed in case one morning we wake up trapped and have to cut our way out.  They also facilitate access to drafts and cats and are damned unsightly. It takes hours to align them precisely with the center of the bed with me with a tape measure making chalk marks and rushing around pulling and tugging.  

So – given that the stuff we brought from Australia was nigh upon rooted  – I sent to the UK for some new ‘Super King’ Duvets and when these arrived I allocated all the Austrian stuff for the guest room.

I then packed all the Australian stuff up and told Cate that I was going to throw it away. I said ‘Cate – I am going to put all this in the bin– immediately’. She said. ‘Yes dear – you do that’.

The next day she said ‘You didn’t really put it in the bin did you?’ and I said of course I did not – it is in the basement in plastic bins along with all the other stuff that we have never thrown away. Like the two old vacuum cleaners down there that still work. If one actually died and could not be fixed at the repair shop we would probably have it cryogenically frozen until a cure could be found.

Mind you – the basement is now so full I have take care because the bins are piled high and I run the risk of being crushed and it would be a hell of a way to go to be suffocated under a pile of old bed linen and towels. Not that there is  much danger from towels so threadbare you could watch television through them – but there is an enormous number of them. 

But I promise – next time we move – I am really, really going to throw all this stuff out. I am so not going to take all this shit with us when we go to America – or anywhere else for that matter!

Although - I see that U-STORE-IT in Peoria has got some great rates – and they speak Spanish.