Plastic bags can come in very handy

Well it has been an interesting week.  Furniture taken into storage last Friday.  I was completely unorganised when the removal men arrived.  They move so fast packing everything in sight.  I liked the way the young removal man/boy (he must have been about 18) went bright red when I was sorting out my knicker drawer. I know, I should have sorted it out earlier but there were many leaving glasses of wine to drink in my final days in Scotland.

Dust was hoovered under beds, pillows binned because I read somewhere that 10% of pillows are made up of dust mites and dead skin after a certain amount of time. House cleaned and returned in one piece to landlady.  Minus one box of her curtains that were accidentally packed. Luckily an early trip to the storage depot on Monday morning solved that problem much to the amusement of the removal men.

 One car sold, another car gone to sister, one boat to friend to sail, the other boat to friend to store.  It is quite liberating getting rid of things.  The only problem is we did not pack enough stuff 3 weeks ago to be shipped so we turned up at my parent's house with 4 suitcases, two large black holdalls, 3 other bags and 4 pieces of hand lugguage.  I actually have the least amount of stuff. My daughter's case is the heaviest and my husband has two extra bags.  Oh and much to my husband's annoyance - 2 plastic bags.  He has a phobia about plastic bags.  I think he needs to see someone about it. They are not that bad.  They will not harm you unless you put them over your head.

The hire car was the biggest we could get but hardly big enough.  The journey from Scotland yesterday was long. I was crying saying goodbye to my parents and my husband sulked for the first part of the journey because I had delayed him apparently chatting to my Mum's neighbour for an hour and now we were going to hit Birmingham in rush hour.  In my experience it is always rush hour in Birmingham so it is irrelevant what time you leave.  He then made a rule that we were not allowed to eat in the car.  I like eating, I thought everyone eats in the car?

 My son started retching and threatened to be sick in a tesco bag if we didn't stop after an hour into the journey.  We had not even made it to Glasgow.  He got out of the car and threw himself on the pavement saying he was going to collapse with hunger.  (My Mum had made him a massive breakfast two hours earlier before we left).  There were about 6 toilet stops. Two of them within 15 minutes of each other.  The children were "desperate" and no they could not hold on for half an hour.

The big excitement was that my children discovered that for £1 they could get two disposable toothbrushes that come out of a machine in service station toilets.  Really quite clever.  I recommend them.  They are in a tiny plastic ball, inside there is a toothbrush with no handle that you chew.  It has toothpaste on it.  We now have a supply of them.  How we lived without them I do not know.  We will stink of mint.  Important: you do not swallow the toothbrush, you spit it out.

My husband is now standing over me reading as I write.  I am going to get him a plastic bag in a minute.