Down the Back of the Chair

One of the bright stars of children's literature is Margaret Mahy. Her poem 'Down the Back of the Chair' is about a harrassed dad in need of cash. One of his children suggests that he hunt down the back of the chair, and you wouldn't believe what he finds - there's a dragon down there, a pirate ship, a packet of pins and one of the twins... I can recommend the Frances Lincoln edition, with illustrations by Polly Dunbar.

I was thinking of it this morning. Sunday was The Day of the Three Wise Men, Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar. Today was The Day of the Three Determined Women, Debbie, Bebe, and Margi. One of the rooms in our church hall has become the dumping ground for very old chairs, abandoned coke bottles, chairs, large tables, drama group stuff, newish chairs, display boards, more tables, little wooden chairs that somebody got for us when a school was chucking them out (sit on them and you know why the school didn't want them), some old and tatty books, chairs, the new chairs, glue pots, chairs, chairs, toys, you get the picture.

After two and a half hours and a lot of woman-power, we got it done. We didn't find any dragons, pirate ships, or twins, but we did find

Ten party poppers (my fault)

Nine kinds of dust

Eight items of scenery

Seven rickety card tables

Six empty bottles

Five colours of paint

Four toy trains

Three cuddly toys

Two rolls of masking tape

One mouldy orange

And a whole new eco-system in the bin.

It is now sorted. We have fought the furniture into a corner, cleaned and tidied. The dust saw Debbie coming and tried to hide, but no good. I hope we get Brownie points in heaven for this.