Manic Monday?

Every day it seems has to have a tag. Bloody Sunday. Black Monday. Ruby Tuesday. Wobbly Wednesday. Mrs. Thursday. And so on…….

Today then is Wind down Monday. Of course in a perfect world it would be Wednesday but alas we managed to unpack in 3 days and ruined the script.

It was on a Friday morning the removal men came to call, they delivered not just one box but brought them one and all. 297 to be precise. All present and correct. The only missing item was the dog. We put her into Dogotel to spare her and us the trauma of her raging against the intruders bearing boxes great and small.

The challenge was moving to a floor area roughly half what we had in England. Much of what he we have is still in plastic crates. We have fitted them together like the wooden puzzles we had as children, hoping that as and when we want something the pile won’t come crashing down when we pull out the crate near the bottom.

The worrying aspect is the fact that we had already disposed of a vast amount of stuff. Yes, stuff is what we have. Piled high. Clothes maketh the man, said Erasmus (later borrowed by Polonius) although of course he said it in Latin. Well in that case we have enough to make an army. And possibly a navy and an air force too. If that is true then shoes clearly maketh the woman. Although I am reasonably sure that the First Sea Lord wouldn’t be seen in Manolo Blahnik, at least not in public. What he gets up to behind the doors of his cabin is his business.

And books. I somewhat misunderestimated, George Bush (43) style. So now they are piled everywhere and I wonder why I have so many. Why on earth do I have a small collection of cookery books? My forte is fresh Waitrose pasta. I don’t think Delia or Nigella would be very impressed. An entire shelf of P G Wodehouse is understandable. So are two floor-to-ceiling bookcases of miscellaneous tomes on birds, moths and photography. Another 2 shelves of New Naturalists. Stacks of business and investing books might be ok. Then there are Dickens and Hardy novels. So what am I to get rid of? Maybe the gardening section could go? I don’t think I shall need Monty Don again. I have already discarded Alan Titchmarsh. Not a moment too soon many would argue. I am unlikely to use the Butterflies of Hertfordshire again. So that would be at least 5 to go. Only another 3995 to go. Roughly.

On the bright side my study or man-cave is almost palatial. I have installed my espresso maker, 2 printers, 2 laptops and a dry cabinet to protect lenses against humidity. Why do I need two laptops? Because the world sees fit to stop me using DVDs from different regions on one laptop. You can actually change region five times and then it locks. So my newer MacBook is for HK DVDs and general work. The old one is the exclusive domain of UK DVDs, currently rerunning Kenneth Clark’s magnificent Civilisation series. I am thinking of sending a copy to the White House.

I remain challenged by how to set up the TVs, which are British bought and need something called a digital decoder. Search me, guv’nor. I have no idea. As there is absolutely nothing worth watching on HK TV this is no hardship for me but Mrs. Ha likes the Korean dramas they show. I think that is why she became addicted to Pointless in Britain. I watch little TV anyway. I prefer 1970s rugby when Wales won everything. I have barely progressed past Steptoe and Son and Ena, Minnie and Martha in the Snug.

At least we have reached a point where we can sit and look at the chaos rather than be overwhelmed by it. Later today we will bail Lulu out of Dogo-jail and she can chase the robot vacuum cleaner round the apartment.

The true sign of having settled in though is the arrival of our first moth. Mrs. Ha suspects this is her late father come to inspect her new home. Unless her father was called Cirrhochrista brizoalis I think this is unlikely. But you never know.

To be continued (maybe).