51) Bear with me - Life has been busy.

 Since the funeral, and even though I've understood all my life, that one day that house would be down to myself and Ant to sort out, the enormity of the task is still sinking in.

The things we have found are crazy mad. It's a constant surprise in a 'what on earth is in this box?' kind of way.

We have found;

• A large box full of garish, vomit inducing swirly carpet and underlay offcuts from the lounge - laid in 1970. The whole box has been in the living room taking up space since then.
• An envelope full of Fairy liquid advertising posters.
• An envelope full of bits of wax which have fallen off or down the side of candles in mixed colours.
• A box of bits of cut off copper pipe - had been painted so had been used at some point.
• a bag of three new stopcock taps.
• An old engineering manual from 1973 - out of date but with a sheet of 12, King George V, mint stamps.
• A box of bits of metal - pipe bits, brackets, screws, unidentifiable bits.
• several unopened and well out of date full ins of roses/heroes/quality street.
• A huge number of shoes - never worn and with their partners missing.
• An old Austin car Haynes manual - with a whole sheet of  200 stamps. 1/2p value so £1 total.
• Odd pairs of new shoes in boxes and bags, so old they split when bent.
• Half drunk bottles of Rum and Brandy and Sherry which had to be poured down the sink.
• A tin of what once were peaches, black stuff has oozed out somehow and adhered the tin to the shelf. Once free, the tin weighed virtually nothing. I don't know where the peaches went.
• A gorgeous old hardbacked and illustrated Peter Pan book.
• Two green flamenco dresses age 8 and 10, clearly meant for my daughters 14 years ago.
• A small boys dungarees aged 18m - probably for my son, now aged 23.
• A teddy bear - squished flat and covered in years of dust, under 2 heavy boxes.
• A crisp multipack bag full of empty and flattened crisp packets - all laid neatly on top of each other.
• Another carpet, used, beige, about 6ft x 5ft, rolled up behind the sofa. Due to this, the sofa spent its life three feet further forward than it should have done for 15 years, making the room 3ft smaller.
• Seven tins of Heinz tomato soup, all covered in black sticky stuff stuck to the shelf. One was hissing at me so it went in the garden until I deem the explosion risk low enough to transport it to the tip.
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