Having been very concerned about the fact that the ship carrying our cargo from the UK to Australia (according to the tracking pages on the shipping company's website) was bouncing between Egypt and Italy, I needn't have been worried because they were actually aboard a completely different ship and arrived safely in Brisbane port last week.
We were given a timeslot of between 9 am and 10 am for delivery and I thought I was safe showering at 8.30. Wrong! I got out of the shower to be greeted by Mr Pickle saying "Mummy, your phone was making a lot of noises". The delivery man was early and was trying to get hold of me? Unheard of! I rang the number that had been left on the voicemail and heard a ringtone outside of the house. I looked up and saw a face in the window of the front door. Thankfully, I wasn't in the nip!
So, the boxes were delivered and filled one end of the lounge. A return to box city. You might think that this is why I have named the sequel to the sequel The Box Room. No, duh, duh duh....suspence music....all will be revealed.
These boxes contained (past tense, as I have single handedly emptied them with a little interference from Mr Pickle) our kitchen gadgets, crockery, cutlery, Mr Pickles's toys amongst other treasured items. In our house back in the UK, we had lots of cupboards in our kitchen and utility room. This proved just the right amount of space to hide a multitude of items we seldom use but would be desperate for if you didn't have it, i.e. the egg slicer. We didn't think we had lots of cupboards in the UK until we saw what the average Australian kitchen cupboard quota is. We also have a cupboard/bad boy room (that would be for Jeremy, not Mr Pickle) which is labelled as a Butler room. Hmmm, not sure how much butling you can do in a space that is about 10 cm wider than a shipping box (see where I am leading you in my story) and as long as three. It is actually meant to have the washing machine in there with a wall mounted dryer but the door isn't wide enough to get one through. There are even mounting brackets on the wall for the dryer to hang on.
Jeremy has been in the outback for the last two weeks. It is a dangerous thing to leave me to my own devices with lots of empty cardboard boxes and a space that was just crying out for some makeshift cupboarding. This house has now been improved by the addition of an actual 'box room'. There is one cardboard box cupboard hanging on the wall brackets (that took some measuring for the hanging holes on the back) one below it with a piece of flooring as a a worktop (the bread making station) and on the opposite side of the glory hole there is a tall cupboard (two boxes, stacked one on top of the other) containing Mr Pickle's craft supplies and the Hoover.
It was just like being six again, when I used to make Sindy houses and furniture out of shoe and tissue boxes. I think I may have stumbled on to the next big thing! You heard it here first ladies and gentlemen. Forget Ikea kitchens. PikeaTM kitchens are so the thing of next Tuesday.
