'Tis the season to...

...sort out the house prior to having djbp to stay for a few days at Christmas.

I love having guests, and particularly enjoy having guests over holidays such as Christmas. This didn't use to be a problem, living as I did in a 4 bedroom house with two spare bedrooms and seperate living & dining rooms which could both be converted into guest accommodation without too much effort or impact on the general tenor of living in the house. But we moved.

Much as I love our current house, it is not exactly ideal for this kind of adventure. The family expanded by one (who needs her own bedroom) and we've got one less bedroom here anyway. Our dining space runs directly into our kitchen space and the living room is where the only working tv and all the kids' toys are stored because of space issues. Hmmm.

Time to plan and plot.

In an ideal world, we'll keep the living room free for an extended visit, as it is where the kids will spread out their new toys and watch the tv. Having this space available for them at any hour is guaranteed to save on sleep for everyone (ie: none of the "Get up David, it's 7.00am and the Teletubbies is on!"). So, the only solution I can readily come up with is... jig around Jared's room to fit a spare bed in there. He's a heavy sleeper and more than capable of waking up early and tiptoeing out so as not to wake people. He spends vast tracts of time in his pyjamas anyway, so lack of access to his clothes whilst David is sleeping should not be an issue. Also, he doesn't snore like a steam train, unlike Tim.

So... time to figure out how to move around J's furniture to fit in an extra bed (having realised that buying bunk beds this close to Christmas is probably foolhardy). Also time to send Tim to our Free Furniture Shop err... storage unit... and pull out the z-bed that we used extensively whilst living in Gravesend. I think I can probably manage this by substituting J's old (and rapidly collapsing) corner desk with our newer but unused straight desk, and getting rid of the Macintosh computer that has been living in J's room for ... well forever, it feels like. I've offered it around everywhere, but noone seems to want it, or have the ability to collect it, so here's the final call: if you want a perfectly useable Starmax PowerMac clone with screen, CD R/RW and lots of free software (incl. games and a very expensive legal copy of Cubase with extras), let me know asap. You must be able to pick this up, as I don't have enough time or money to ferry it around the country. I'm happy to hold onto it for a while in the purposes of getting to people via MongolMail (ie: passing it along a chain of people until it gets to it's intended home), but not forever.

If this fails, I shall either rip the HD out and Freecycle it, or simply junk it if there is no interest there.

Let me know.

I'm off to shuffle furniture.

Advantages of having a bloody cold conservatory in December.

Well, it's no good as living space, I can tell you. Unless you happen to be looking to break a fever, or are practising for camping in the Arctic circle.

However, it is jolly useful for storing all of the Christmas food that you can't fit into the fridge, because the fridge is stupidly small.

Short of vegetables (to be bought from the farm shop) and the turkey (being delivered on the 24th), I *think* I've got everything. Tonight will hopefully feature a long Lush-y bath and perhaps sausage roll and mince pie making :-) Hurrah!