Last night, while I was out talking about particle physics in Croydon, my useless family lost the TV remote. Having excluded all the other possibilities, this morning I came to the conclusion there was no option but to subject the sofa to radical surgery.

A few careful slashes with a stanley knife later, here’s the result.

For posterity, here (excluding a very strict definition of actual rubbish) is the inventory…

• Tech
  • One TV remote (hurrah!)
  • One mobile phone (broken)
  • Two mobile phone sim-card holders
  • One plastic port sealer from an old Mac Air
  • One magnetic top from a knock-off apple pencil, with a pin, a staple and a paperclip stuck to it
• One Letter from the bank
• One photo of son
• One tuning fork (E)
• Two eye-covering face masks
• One rubber lizard
• Lego
  • One lego leg
  • One set of instructions for building a lego minifigure
  • One lego minifigure visor
• One cushion tassle
• One ski pass
• One ski pass holder
• One rubber frog
• Two socks (not a pair, obviously)
• Two conkers
• One set of teen tampon instructions
• One sachet of silica gel (do not eat)
• One teatowel label (“Names of Ireland”)
• One marble
• One leather baggage tag
• One rubber flying pig
• One long piece of pink string
• One cardboard jigsaw piece with a butterfly on it
• One dragonfly tattoo
• One loomband necklace
• Two keyrings
• One rawl plug
• One Tom and Jerry moving picture thing
• One picture of Clarence the Camel (Who he? Ed)
• One Mathletics.com password (Year 6)
• Hair-related
  • Six combs
  • Nine hair bands
  • One large and five small hair clips
• Stationery
  • Eleven pens
  • Two felt tip pens
  • Six pencils
  • One bulldog clip
  • Three more paperclips
  • Three rubber bands
  • One metal cat-shaped book mark, and two cardboard bookmarks
• Money
  • £3.32 in loose change
  • Two Swiss centimes
  • Ten Icelandic Krona
  • Five Croatian Kuna (why!? None of us have been to Croatia)
• Food related
  • One hazelnut
  • One peanut
  • One packet of wahaka chilli seeds
  • One label for a fifty-flavours-of-jellybean pack
  • One wooden meat skewer
  • Two spoons
  • One Franco Manca flier
  • One cat treat
• One dead moth