By

Craig Ennew

—

Five: Space Exploration

This week: Craig takes a deep breath and goes where no man has gone before.

A Tupperware Tsunami

My wife is making lists: lists of things we need to get rid of; lists of jobs that need doing ahead of our move to West Lulworth. As is the norm, I follow her initiative and begin making lists of my own. But me being me, I decide to cheat and download a Things You Need To Do Before You Move House article from a lifestyle blog – one that turns out to be infinitely more practical than the one you are reading. Unfortunately, the author resides States-side, and I have no truck with baseboards and fanny-packs.

My better half, though, is on a mission. Having started a job in the independent sector, her imminent half-term break kicks in a good week ahead of mine. She plans to use it ‘sorting through rooms and doing tip runs’.

‘But it’s your first holiday since the end of August,’ I say. ‘Me and The Boy will still be out of your hair for a week. Don’t spend it doing house jobs – do something nice instead.’

I present as ‘Attentive Husband of the Year’; in reality my words are insurance against having to do anything remotely strenuous when my holiday comes around.

I move mentally around the ten rooms of our house, trying to channel my inner Stacey Solomon, but baulking at the task ahead. Meanwhile, the guts of the piano I tried to kill (see Two: Killing Pianos post) lie groaning against the side of the house, refusing to go anywhere. I’m guessing that this leviathan doesn’t figure in my wife’s tip-runs – it took two strong men and me to haul the bloody thing out through the front door. Besides, there are other fright-spaces to consider…

To the rear of the garden lies the shed. It’s a brick out-building that pre-dates our late-Victorian Salisbury semi. It first functioned as a laundry for the old hotel at the end of the road, comprising of a bigger side and a smaller one. The former incorporates a sink and a small fireplace connected to an old ‘copper’ for laundering bedclothes. When the purchase went through over a decade ago, I had exciting plans for this space. An Air B&B! A granny annexe! My personal favourite (and I kept this one to myself) was a miniature pub complete with a swinging sign and draught beer pumps in glinting brass. However, as time went on, it became, like most sheds, a dumping ground for garden furniture and, in the Summer months, pretend stables-cum-experimental science lab for The Boy and his grubby mates. In addition, its eaves have also served as an inverted Gothic graveyard for chunky wooden farm-kitchen chairs, retro-diner steel stools, random planks of wood and stretches of guttering – all hooked like dying farm animals over the worm-gnawed wooden beams.

The smaller side is scarier still. Because the bulb blew years ago, I never bothered replacing it and I am now forced to enter cautiously with a torch. Therein, ivy creeps through the crevices to twist among the webbed lairs of terrifyingly gargantuan spiders. With its dripping walls and rusty torture instruments hanging off hooks, the space gives off distinct Silence of the Lambs vibes.

Inside the house, there are other no-go areas I must face up to before we depart. Our wine rack – which can never be termed ‘neglected’ – lies just inside the dreaded Cupboard Under The Stairs. Its location, let’s face it, is the only cause I have to enter. Beyond its oft-replenished shelves, discarded IKEA bags, winter scarves, scart leads and empty packages (kept in case we needed to send it back – we never bother) are jammed into every crevice. I’ve been known to go to Mountain Warehouse and buy a new waterproof rather than having to burrow through that cupboard to find my perfectly adequate old one.

Up to the point when the new kitchen was installed, we also had our very own Cupboard of Doom there too. I’m sure every home has one – the cupboard that you rarely open for fear of drowning in a veritable tsunami of tumbling Tupperware, rinsed takeaway cartoons from the local Chinese, and those plastic Peppa Pig plates adults resort to using when they can’t be arsed to unload the dishwasher. Once the new kitchen was in, we resolved never to have such a cupboard again, but this has proven to be nigh-on impossible. Hence, just above the toaster, we have the newly-christened Son of Cupboard of Doom.

If you can imagine the set of Trolls blown apart by Semtex, then you’ll have some idea.

Of all rooms in the house, though, The Boy’s Room poses the greatest challenge. If you can imagine the set of Trolls blown apart by Semtex, you’ll have some idea. Carnage on a daily basis.

And by the way, what twisted masochist invented slime? We have tried to ban it from the house, but it finds its evil way in and spreads like hogweed over great expanses of stained carpet.

In The Boy’s bedroom, the far wall is lined with boxes of board games, rendered useless due to their contents being scattered far and wide across the battlefield. My wife has tried, largely in vain, to train The Boy to tidy up after himself. She arrives at the scene of devastation, barks orders, then leaves in a cloud of rage. Woefully, he turns to me – the soft touch. I get a plaintive, ‘Dad, can you help me?’ Like a mug, I spend the next fifteen minutes cramming pen lids, Pokémon cards, lidless paint pots and ripped pairs of cacks into already-bursting drawers and under the bed, in a futile attempt to make the place look tidy. Meanwhile, the culprit lies on his bed watching Tracy Beaker on the i-Pad.

When he’s out of the house, we have a purge: chucking out things he’s grown out of, incomplete sets of things, dried up felt-tips. But no matter how many black bin-bags I fill, come the next day, his floor will already be littered with small, unidentifiable pieces of plastic and questionable ‘matter’.

And this is the nature of clutter. Einstein had it right: matter can neither be creates or destroyed. Perhaps, when we move to The Shack, we and Stacey Solomon can prove the clever feller wrong.

©Craig Ennew 2024

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