I was planning to go to the dump today. The need for a run to the household waste recycling centre (see how neatly I slipped in that POV)* arose indirectly as a consequence of our holiday. I had to clear the spare room of clutter before Mr and Mrs Smith could sleep in it, resulting in rather a lot of stuff being deposited around the edges of our bedroom. Specifically, my screen, projector table, box holding the projector and extension cable, bag of woodland charity leaflets, several boxes and bags of beekeepers' library books, the beekeepers' cash boxes, some past year beekeepers' accounts that nobody will tell me I am definitely allowed to throw away, some freshly made up brood frames, two packets of foundation and some unassembled frames, a disintegrating jumbo pack of egg boxes, the honey extractor, a large plastic box of assorted and possibly redundant electronics, a packet containing assorted artworks by my nephew and nieces, a bag of wrapping paper and another of used padded envelopes.
It seemed a waste of an opportunity to simply shove everything back in the spare room when we got back, so I decided to go whole hog and tackle the other spare room as well. It doubles up as an overflow library, so it would be nice to be able to get in there. Access was OK while we only had boxes of cheap plates and glasses stacked on the bed, left over from when we had a party and kept in case we ever wanted to have another party, but then when the Systems Administrator sold the boat everything out of the boat that was not sold with it ended up in the middle spare bedroom as well. That included our oilskins, life jackets, assorted fleeces, scarves, hats, gloves (not necessarily in pairs), sleeping bags, a bosun's chair, assorted charts (by now several years out of date), a chart case, several torches, a crate of cheap plastic plates and a couple of saucepans, a handheld GPS, a thing that might have been something to do with radar, a brass thermometer and clock (never installed), a stuffed cloth parrot which used to hang from the grab rails of our previous boat (it was a good idea to avoid looking at it too much in rough weather, when it used to swing about so violently that it made the motion of the boat seem even worse), ordnance survey maps of the Falmouth and Plymouth areas, string, a short piece of rope, and underneath it all a mysterious sticky patch on the carpet (though that might have been something to do with the honey extractor).
It's a bittersweet moment, the point at which you realise that your nerves, your finances and the state of your back are no longer up to keeping a boat, and I could understand why the SA had preferred to unload the contents of the cabin and shut the door on them. I'd been thinking for months that I had better sort out the middle spare room at some point, so while I had the contents of the end room in flux was clearly the time to do it. I took the sailing gear and spare crockery out of the middle room and put them in the sitting room. It was, as Len Deighton put it, beginning to shape up nicely.
Then it seemed a waste not to tackle the cupboard in the end room that had got to a point that when you opened it piles of used padded envelopes and wrapping paper fell out, so I took everything out of that cupboard as well, discovering our walking boots, a long walking stick I thought we lost years ago, our padded gloves (that I couldn't find when I went on the RSPB birdwatching barge trip, and I would have been jolly glad of them), another oilskin jacket, our gaiters but not the crampons, an extremely ancient packet of Kendal Mint Cake, a wall poster of British Sheep Breeds and one of the topography of the Lake District, two squash rackets (neither of us play squash and I expect racket technology has improved in the past twenty years), a portable easel, two air rifles (superseded by the SA's current air rifle) and an air pistol, a rather shaky camera tripod, an electric and two manual typewriters, two inflatable mattresses that might or might not be air tight, and my woodland charity volunteer speaker of the year 2008 framed certificate.
Then I found somewhere other than the middle spare bedroom to store the things I wanted to keep, though the projection equipment, egg boxes, beehive parts and beekeepers' books did end up back in the end bedroom. I don't know why I'd collected so many padded envelopes. I must have been nourishing subconscious fantasies of setting up as a mail order second hand book dealer. The Systems Administrator gallantly tackled the electronics, and between us we ended up with a lot of bags and boxes to go to the tip.
Then I went to put my suitcase away in the cupboard under the eves in our bedroom, once the door wasn't blocked by the beekeepers books, and while trying to make space for the extractor discovered a gigantic television under a heap of old cushions, holdalls and rucksacks. I am quite embarrassed to think we ever had such a monster, but I suppose that is what TVs were like about a decade ago. I had to summon the SA to help me get it out of the cupboard, and getting it downstairs is going to be interesting. I'm not even sure how we ever got it into the cupboard, but we must have been younger and fitter in those days.
So I was going to load up the car and make a trip to the dump first thing this morning. But then the lead story in the East Anglian Daily Times and the two local papers was of traffic chaos in the area following a collision between a lorry and a tractor on the A120. It even made it on to the R2 morning traffic bulletin, and we agreed that we could live with the mess for another couple of days.
*POV stands for Popular Orange Vegetable, a phrase coined by a journalist to avoid repeating the noun 'carrot' within the same paragraph. If there isn't a handy synonym it might just be better to use the original word again.
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