Vader Time

Stop, it’s Vader Time!

(apologises, my inner geek wins this time)

Keep on moving

Another day off, another person to move.

In a moment of weakness, I agreed to help move Mr Ben’s brother into his first new flat.

Note to self, days off are to relax and not to carry boxes up and down stairs.

Still, that particular weekday morning dawned brightly as the sun shone straight through a crack in the curtains and onto my sensitive eyelids waking me up moments before Mrs Mr Ben left for work at ungodly o’clock in the morning.

After the first cup of tea of the day, we got into the van borrowed for the days jaunt and headed on the drive out into the country to the house of the parents of Mr ben. Arriving there presently, we headed up to the room that Mr Ben’s brother had called home thus far to find him removing random screws from his bed. We hastily devested him of tools and sent him to cut the cake.

Parent Mrs Ben devested him of the cake knife shortly there after.

Pausing only to check which cake went better with the second cup of tea, we loaded the van, and two cars and headed out on the road again.

For all of ten minutes.

Yep, it really wasn’t all that far to go before Mr Ben was parking with precision on the garden path of the new flat. We got the essentials out first, lifting weights, cleaning products and the Xbox then emptied the remainder of the cars and van into the first floor flat that was to be Mr Ben’s brothers new home.

Pausing to retrieve the footwell mats, we got back in the van and returned to the rest of the garage that needed transporting while the cleaning was going on. And the locating of the electric meter. And the locating of the water meter. And the pondering why the bathroom vent didn’t work.

We returned to find that none of these jobs had been accomplished.

But there was tea and cake so it wasn’t all bad. And once we had unloaded, the move was pretty much complete – mainly as most of the furniture had yet to be delivered from the shop.

With a job well done, we walked past the neighbours (Sainsbury’s) and headed into a pizzeria for lunch where i introduced the family to the delights of pesto for which they kindly repaid me by paying for lunch.

Of course, you know that most moves I undertake don’t finish that easily and you would be right again.
Leaving Mr Ben’s brother to admire the non-functioning vent in his kitchen, we checked the bed and rabbit hutch were still in the van and set off.

Did I not mention the rabbit hutch? It’s hand painted and everything. And it was taking up room in Mr Ben’s shed that Mrs Mr Ben could better use for more bedding for the rabbits. Yes they have another hutch – it’s best not to get into too many details.

The bed was our first port of call somewhere along the M4 – whereas this morning it had been the resting place for a 6 foot tall strapping lad, his university degree still fresh, from this evening it was to become the bed of a three year old lass, the daughter of a friend of Mr Ben.

let’s take a moment to regard the bed.

This isn’t a regular pinth and mattress style bed. Nor is it a pine frame. Nope, this bed is four foot tall with cupboards, drawers and a desk built in.

The little girl is three foot and change high. And she was asleep so we had to put it together in what will be her new bedroom very, very quietly.

Luckily her sister was up past her bed time so she got to try out the bed once we had reconstructed it. The sister was around four feet and it was lucky that there was a Mr Ben to give her a lift.

We suspect that a ladder may be a new, and quickly added, addition to the bed.

But we hadn’t finished yet so pausing for a fortifying cup of herb and hot water (tea) we drove back along the M4 and took a left towards some hills. We needed the tea as we were to face a formidable beast – yes we had to stand ankle to face with a beagle – still recovering from a recent operation.

As we had turned up in a goods van, we were made to walk around the house with the rabbit hutch were we noticed that the hand painted grass matched quite well with the real grass in the garden.

There were a few minutes where we used snips and pliers to cut up some chicken wire (yes we carried many things in that van) to repair holes in the guinea pig hutch where a friendly fox had tried to say hello then we made our goodbyes.

We were just too late for lasagna apparently and didn’t get tea, though we did get a good selection of cereal bars and some lemonade.

Then the beagle relented and let us go into the dark for another bout of Radio 2 on the way back to Mr Ben’s.

We did stop for one final cup of tea then I was deposited at a tube station to find my way home.

Where wife number one had already locked up, switched off and was an indistinct shape under the duvet.

Theatre Etiquette

A quick post to put up this link from the Daily Telegraph of the golden rules of Theatre Etiquette. Please note that, despite the articles’s tone, these rules are compulsary and shouldn’t be broken on pain of, well, pain:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article6535773.ece