MAD HOUSE DOUBLE VISION

He woke me up at 0830 by flapping the duvet and hooting. I was full of righteous indignation particularly as I'd only turned my light off under duress at 2315 last night.
Today is the day of moving things about. We visited a security shop and had 2 extra front door keys cut, I liked looking at the stonking great padlocks for motorbikes, and we drove to the Renty House.
Behind the shed we found lots of wood for the Scouts campfire and pulled it all out. The ladder died of woodworm and rot before we'd even got it to the car, we had to sweep the pavement afterwards. Throughout these activities, a small rat-dog in the front window of a neighbouring house kept his beady eyes on us. Rat dogs are classed as any dog small enough to be reasonably mistaken for a rat. Examples include Pekinese and those tiny pointless things that Sloane Rangers or pink grannies carry in their handbags. An important characteristic is the huge deep-down anger they have because they are so small: so they snarl and yip and yap from their protected position in the coat pocket of their owners. They also have a particular noise which is 'Rat! Rrrrat!' hence the name. This one was a Yorkshire Terrier, and it was very angry that we should invade its personal bit of pavement.
It also Rrratted at the postman who brought us our very own first pile of junk mail in the new house. He never Rrratified a treaty. We climbed to the first floor window and swept out the bay, I poured water down it to prove the drain worked and we'd done our first job! I stalked the corridors babbling and planning and shouting because everyone has to have a talent.
At the back of the house is one of those bin-access passageways, so we trundled round the whole city block to find the entrance. There wasn't one. There was a gap between 2 houses on the expensive road and he'd left the gate open so we nipped in and investigated the back of our own shed, removed the discarded barbecue and fought the Virginia creeper. It was totally overgrown and obvious that nobody used it, apart form the chap whose gate we'd used who came out to politely tell us it wasn't for us and to kindly not invade his back passageway.
Popping home to offload the wood, we nipped to the Scout lockup and cleared out the scrap metal and sold it to the big bloke with the forklift truck in the industrial estate at the top of the island. Because the scrap metal was of lower quality he only gave us £1.92 but that could buy a hungry Cub Scout a biscuit! Maybe I'll be that Cub Scout ...
We filled up with diesel and bought a Hi-fi cable and all the way, I sang my new song about 'the butt-bone connected to the brain-bone...'
We had an early lunch and talked to Zoe the Cleaner and then got out of her way and went back to the Renty House to tidy up. I condemned the shower hose to be replaced, we found a working light bulb for the under-stairs cupboard and road-tested both toilets simultaneously! He swept the front while I found the mop and played Inter-Galactic Death Throes, in which I scrupulously role-played both sides, so half the time I was making exploding and machine-gunning noises and going "Aaargh, I will Kill you, pathetic humans..." and the other half the time, dying heroically at the hands of my own mop, ended up sounding like the all-for-one-and-one-for-all scene at the end of those special German movies.
Eventually we'd done enough and came home where Bud began the dreaded X-Box setup. The father of one of my co-conspirators tried this recently and it took ages with the addition of many bad words. This afternoon was indeed the night of the long sighs but complex words were absent. After only 2 hours I was Minecrafting, although we did have to check in Jof's car to see if the game had dropped out of the bag, only to discover that it was a 25-digit code on the receipt.
Now all I need is some kind of reclining aircraft-style chair and chocolate dispenser combo ...
Ben told me he'd been at Cheddar Gorge today. I really must try that.