On a roll...!!

Enthused by our relative success at the boot fayre yesterday, I have spent today preparing piles of stuff we no longer need/want/require ready to be sent off to various other locations that aren't our house. I've been up in the attic again. And in the wardrobes. And in the kitchen cupboards. In fact, I've been EVERYWHERE. It was a bit like giving all the nooks and crannies an MOT. I've had to stop now as the outside bin is full, but it's bin day tomorrow so once the waste collection operatives have been I can start again.

There is a pile of stuff waiting for collection by the PDSA tomorrow morning some time between 10 and 11. I phoned and said, 'I've got a load of stuff to donate, do you collect only there is a lot of it and if I walked it into town I'd have to do about 20 trips.' And the nice lady said, 'Yes we do collect. Our van is in your area tomorrow morning,' so that was sorted. My criteria for charity shop donation is 'Would I buy this myself?' And if I would, then it went into the PDSA pile. (Of course, I wouldn't really buy it. I mean, it's already mine and besides, I'm trying to get rid of it, so buying it back would be pointless and wasteful and fill up the cupboards again. But you know what I mean.)

My second pile is of books. We sold many yesterday but there are still nearly 300 hundred left. Fiction, reference, science, classics, even some antiquarian medical books and encyclopaedias that belonged to my great grandparents. I phoned a bookshop in Rochester called Baggins. They buy second hand and antique books. It's the biggest book shop ever. It's rather scary going in there because it's a bit like disappearing through the back of the wardrobe into Narnia and you feel that the shelves might collapse at any moment and you'll suffer death by book drowning.

'I have about 300 hundred books to sell,' I said to the lady who answered the phone. 'Varying types,' and I reeled off a list of genres. 'Only do you collect only I don't have transport.'
It appeared I had been talking to a person of foreign extraction. She informed me in stilted English, but with a very musical tone, I thought, that I would need to call back tomorrow at 10 and speak to the manager. 'Good,' I thought. 'I'll do that, and if he doesn't want them, I'll give them to the PDSA man.'

My final pile is of electrical equipment. Charity shops won't take electrical goods, even if it's a brand new coffee percolator. So the coffee percolator, the video recorder, the foot spa, the nail polisher and the many redundant printers, bits of computers, stereos etc are going onto 'Freecycle'. You post your goods on the site and if someone wants them, they just come and take them away! Simple!

I even managed to off load six novels, an earthenware bowl and a Shaun the Sheep on my Mum when she popped in this morning.
'I only came for eggs,' she said.
'That'll teach you,' said I.

And Leane is doing boot fayre on Wednesday. 'If you want any extra stock, I have some,' I said, when we had a quick chat on Facebook. 'Especially if that stock is some of Chris's tat that's been cluttering up the loft for that last year and a half.'

Guy, our builder, arrived promptly this morning to assess the damage to the 'one less tile roof.

'Oh, that'll be simple to fix,' he said. 'I'll give the others a wiggle whilst I'm up there, make sure they won't come crashing down.'

'Whilst you're about it, can you do some other jobs for us?' I said.

So Guy is not only fixing the missing tile, he is also filling in an old plug socket in the kitchen, re-sealing the shower with new sealant (I would have done this myself only the last time I played with a sharp knife I ended up with a nasty cut that has left me unable to feel the side of my left index finger), plaster over the gap in middle bedroom's ceiling where the old wardrobes used to be, finish off the wall behind the butler sink where the kitchen fitters failed to finish 2 years ago and sort out a paving slab on the patio where the eucalyptus tree has being behaving like a triffid this year and pushed up a big root and made it wobble. (I have been having visions of Andy tipping base over apex over it and cracking his head on the south wing of Cluckinghen Palace.)

Oh yes, I am on a roll today! Nothing's gonna stop me! Except a full to the brim rubbish bin.