Mrs Down's Diary - Dec 9 2009

In the midst of it I have my office computer and filing cabinets, but the idea now is for all of John's stuff to move over there too.

We await Jacq the tiler to come and finish the floors and then we shall really be in business.

She has motivated us for the clear out. That's the trouble with farms and farm buildings.

Not enough incentive to actually get rid of stuff.

There is always the odd corner of a granary and in our case an empty milking parlour to just store something you can't bear to part with. "Put it on Ebay" John keeps telling me. But I don't.

My sister has a holiday home in Spain near Cadiz where I take Jessica, my granddaughter for a couple of weeks in the summer.

Jessica has got to know other children there in what is essentially a small British ex-pat community in the centre of a large Spanish holiday home area.

Every weekend the pool is taken over by hordes of Spanish children who Jessica, without knowing any Spanish, seems to form an instant bond with. The commune,every area in Spain has a commune, a legacy of the Spanish Civil War apparently, also lays on entertainment for the children each weekend.

Go carts, inflatable slides, artists, musicians, sports leaders. Jess can't wait for us to go back.

The house has been partially furnished with outcasts from the "basura"

or bin area. No-one has an individual dustbin. Instead there are communal collection points where everyone puts out stuff they don't want , although the real rubbish goes into large skips. You acquire quite a collecting bug and there is no shame in it at all. Genuine duff rubbish is in the skip anyway.

If there is another potential life for an article, leave it for others to see if they can find a use. Very Green.

So a story John told me about a builder friend's experience when renovating an old farmhouse was very familiar.

Most of the kitchen fixtures and fittings had gone to fill a skip hired for the purpose.

But the cast iron bath was one item too many for the weight permissible in the skip. To hire another skip was uneconomic as only this item needed to go. What to do?

"Let's lift the bath out and leave it on the front lawn"the builder said. "We'll see what happens to it."

Next morning the bath was still there.

And the next. But the next morning it had gone in the night. Disposal problem solved. Recycling achieved.

Perhaps that's what I should do. Just pile all the stuff out in front of the farm and wait for someone to recycle it in the night.