Can I survive six months without my books?

My story begins with a very small puddle on the kitchen floor. As it was nowhere near the sink, I blamed Biggles, the border terrier, but ‘you know my methods, Watson. Apply them’. And having applied them, I saw at once that the small dog could not be to blame, because he is reliably house-trained and had been bumbling about in the garden for the previous half hour, lifting his leg hither and thither. So I mopped it up and forgot about it. Then, that same afternoon, another pool of water appeared, slightly bigger and not on the same spot.

I could put up with the loss of a lot for six months, but not of Biggles

Cutting to the chase, we had a leak problem, possibly a major one. Possibly quickly became probably, then definitely, and within the week several parties of men from the council, the water board and two plumbing firms had sucked their teeth, then dug and delved and put down a machine called a mole, which burrowed along until it located a fractured pipe, just within our curtilage. After more visits, investigations and even deeper digging, it was pronounced by Damian from Flooding that we had been ‘basically, sitting on top of a swimming pool for a year or so’.

After that it was in the hands of the experts. It did not take long for them to agree with the insurance company that something had to be done and the word ‘urgently’ was attached. This week, therefore, I have mostly been looking for houses to rent and speaking to Joe, the most reliable removal man in the world, who will take all our ground-floor furniture and accessories to his storage units. He will pack everything, including the books, but apparently most of it is easy.