Today has been The Great Tidy Up.

It is the equivalent of a spring clean, without the benefit of the outside as a place to put the furniture while we scour the floor. No corner of the house is safe: specks of dust, be afraid.

My friend Chris, a member of Macaulay the dog’s harem, arrives soon. She will live in the house by the forest for a week, while we depart for our annual Christmas holiday.

She will be the one to cope with the moustachio’d menace’s vagaries, his midnight foibles, triangular ears at dawn, and other stories. We will miss his larger-than-life personality: conversely, Phil will get a good night’s sleep every night for seven days.

As we all know, if someone’s coming to stay, it is the best possible incentive to make sure the house is ship-shape. But little worth doing is ever straightforward.

We woke up to the first official days of the holidays. The children had their holiday faces on: the anxieties of a busy term had slipped away overnight, and wide smiles strolled into my bedroom, a little later than is their wont.

The dog struck several expectant poses without success. This is my best side, he urged us non-verbally, how about a walk? But no-one took any notice because we were determined not to emerge from underneath the duvet until, ooooh, eight o clock at least.

We bibbled. That is, we did very little except pass time talking and joking genially, and amiably wasting minutes.

The word ‘bibble’ is derived from the script of one of my great heroes: Edmund Blackadder.

This BBC series, for those who have not ever met it, is full of some of the most glittering wit British comedy can serve up. Each series is a different era: starting with mediaeval times, and moving on through Elizabethan and Georgian periods.

It concludes in the First World War with some of the cleverest and most telling parody we have seen here.

Its central character is always the same: Edmund Blackadder, a glittering wit who, despite his stunning talents, still manages to lose out in life.

Our verb derives from a wonderful piece of incidental smalltalk in the Elizabethan court. We join Blackadder at the tail end of a converstaion with a man of influence, at his most debonair. He is heard to remark: “And in Genoa, ’tis now the fashion to pin a live frog to the shoulder braid, stand in a bucket and go “bibble” at passers-by.”

It is not yet an accepted turn of phrase, granted: but as long as the frog is purely hypothetical, it has a certain ring to it.

The morning trickled away, and still at lunchtime, my house looked as if brigands had ransacked it thoroughly, when lamentably I had no such excuse.

After lunch I issued a proclamation.

By order of the management, all toys in the house would defy their customary directional flow. It is Toys Law that they, like electrons, travel in one direction: downwards. They start at the children’s bedrooms on the second floor, and somehow materialise in random sites on the bottom floor, two flights of stairs away from their place of origin.

After toy relocation, they could play: but they must be ‘on call’ so to speak, to carry out jobs and errands as necessary.

I waited for their protest: but none came. And so we began what seemed a gargantuan task: removing furniture, hoovering, floor washing, heaving boxes of toys.

I have snapshots in my mind of the children during the afternoon. Maddie playing alone outside in the snowy garden, so happy in her own company; Felix putting his all into washing the lounge floor; Maddie and I cleaning the windows together outside with vinegar-water and newspaper; my daughter preparing the bird feeders for a week of our absence.

But the chief charm of the afternoon, for Maddie and Felix, was the chance to resurrect long-lost toys.

Uncharted territories, these spaces behind the sofa, next to the wardrobe, or under the display cabinets. Today we explored them in the manner of Columbus, with a daredevil audacity.

And there were rich pickings: not only have our own children been mislaying their playthings, but the Princesses and, more importantly, Big Al, have joined the thorough redistribution network.

And so there were surprises in every corner: long-lost table-football players, dollies’ shoes, plastic fairies, matchbox cars: each met with a squeal of pleasure which did make me question, for an instant, the wisdom of buying expensive new toys.

Each was an old friend, a game which could be played once more, a little toy which I know already will be compulsory holiday packing.

As I busied myself around, leaving them to enjoy the recovered booty, I could hear irrepressible gurgles of laughter. It only appears when they are truly relaxed and happy: they are, at heart, very good friends.

I arrived to turn the bedroom upside down and wash the walls: and on the bed a tableau met my eyes.

Big Al had stashed Felix’s huge Lego plane next to the wardrobe back in the Summer, today’s painstaking archaeology had unearthed it. A delighted Felix had borne it away and it became the centrepiece for an intricate game.

Tucked into the plane was a driver and a passenger. The driver was Pascale, a hessian bear I acquired recently, and which both children covet. Behind was Lulu, the owl my daughter cannot live without. She was wearing something approaching a tiara.

At teatime I said to them, that looked like a great game, kids. And they enlightened me as to the plot: Felix has to pay the rent to his, albeit fictional, landlord tomorrow. But when the non-existent play landlord arrives, Felix will not have the money: because Lulu the owl has blown it all on a plane.

The fictional misdeeds had them doubled up with mirth. If playing is an art, these two are virtuosi, master-players. They simply pottered off between the chores and created their own alternative reality.

And now the house is almost clean, and I have just caught Maddie hobbling around in her single voluminous white faux-fur Christmas stocking.

“And that can come off right now, young lady”, I admonish with mock severity. “Santa will need that pristine on Christmas eve. And by the way Felix, where is yours?”

Felix has a brown sparkly one. “Oh, I know where that is”, he announces with superlative authority.

“Where?” I query, clutching wildly at this proffered straw.

He shrugs wickedly. “I have no idea.”