A shadow darkens the window.

I look up from our game of ‘trying to put one brick on top of another’. The Baby frowns at me in irritation. There is something big parked in the road outside.

It is a removal van!!!

Somebody seems to have abandoned a massive removal van outside my house. There is nobody at the wheel, and no sign of any removal people with flat caps and long arms. I study the scene carefully from my vantage point at the nursery window.

The van does not seem to belong to the people over the road who have suddenly decided to move house. Or the other people over the road who have been trying to move house for ages. The LTLP is at work, and it is unlikely that she would move out without telling me or, indeed, getting me to do all the heavy lifting etc., and perhaps dictating a note.

I give the matter some thought. The Short Tonies are away at present. Perhaps some burglars are stealing all their possessions under the guise of being legitimate removal men. I would be a bit embarrassed if this was the case and I did nothing, so I gather up the Baby and sneak next door, through the secret gate that joins the front gardens. If there are burglars then I will hit them with an angry Baby and get her to wee in their eye. Then DNA evidence will be able to track them down.

There are no burglars next door, just a hungry rabbit who I have forgotten to feed. I wander back to the front of the house and look up and down the road.

The people next-door-but-one are moving house!!!

I am now extremely paranoid about this. Of all the houses within a 200-yard radius of mine, approximately 66 per cent of them are either for sale or currently in the actual process of moving out. I resolve to be extra-nice to my remaining neighbours in future, otherwise I will end up in a deserted urban wasteland, just like in the song by the Specials.

Concerned, I retreat indoors to continue the brick game.