Tivoli has told the first part of the story. My bit began when the removals people finally got to Oxford at 4.30.

I've kept a list of what furniture and what size boxes I took to London for storage (which I then naively thought was for six months) and for the last few days I've been panicking about where, in my not completely built house with almost no storage space at all, I was going to put the furniture and 90 boxes (if I haven't needed them for the last three years why on earth should I need them now?).

After the removals people left at 5.30 I started opening a few of the boxes. There were things I was pleased to see (my music) and things I was bewildered by (a ceramic bowl I do not remember at all, offcuts of cloth I don't like - at least they were wrapped round china to stop it breaking - and one piece of furniture and one box of tombola presents that I know for sure are not mine). I haven't started on the books, which I know inhabit most of the boxes. I suspect that I shall be getting rid of an awful lot of those.

There are a lot of shelf uprights-and-brackets with the planks of wood to go on them - what I didn't know when I stored that lot was that you can't put up shelves in a passive house in the way you can in a normal house. I'm going to have to build free-standing bookcases and get rid of the shelving I've happily lived with for most of my life.

I have four visitors arriving from Grenoble to stay for a week exactly seven days from this evening. I now have Tivoli's sofas so they can sit on those, but I have a mammoth amount of sorting and chucking to do in the next week if they are going to be able to sleep, wash and eat.