Vintage Shrewsday today in response to Side View’s Challenge: Cardboard. You can find her site here .

Very Important Happenings at the Shrewsday household today. As Maddie’s birthday approaches, so does the urgent need to create a beautiful new bedroom in accordance with her request.

Clearing a room is rarely straightforward.  The clearing of the highest room in the house, perched on our third floor, with an attic window looking out on the luscious Summer forest, has been a complicated series of moves.

We needed a Toy Evaluation Board consisting of two indecisive executive-type children, myriad trips to the tip, hooverings and dustings and removings. Its all a blur.

Today, as I sat having coffee and putting the world to rights with a great friend, Maddie arrived in the kitchen with a Summons.

Daddy had removed the nursery attic cupboards: and now all the paraphernalia inside must be resited.

Oh, joy.

My friend and I adjourned, and I braced myself. I counted very slowly to twenty. And then I went upstairs.

It wasn’t as bad as all that, really. I just needed to clear a large hole somewhere in Felix’s room, in order to site all the boxes from Maddie’s eaves in this cleared space.

Being a member of the Magic Circle, this was not problem at all for me. I put on my magic hat, tapped Felix’s burgeoning room thrice, and intoned in bell-like tones: “Abracadabra!”

Or was that Mary Poppins?

The reality could have been a little more laborious than that: but being a mother I am well used to wiping unpleasances from my memory. The next thing I recall was a space in Felix’s room just perfectly suited to the bags, boxes and Bionicles which needed a home.

The great transference began. Willing little hands brought box after bag for stashing in the space that was looking less and less cavernous by the second.

And then, a very large cardboard box indeed said “Where do you want me?”

Looking downwards I glimpsed a pair of legs which I took to belong to my son.

Now: I need to mention at this point that this was an iMac box. Phil loves old Macs. He buys them for peanuts and stores them for when they are heirlooms. Will this ever happen? I don’t know. His mother doesn’t think so. She would rather they evacuated her beautifully ordered garage and headed for the great Mac graveyard in the sky.

I am in two minds: I have nostalgia for old Macs, they bewitch me. I did all my journalism training on these little munchkins, roundabout 20 years ago.

But they don’t half clog up the works. And there’s only one thing worse than a pile of redundant Macs, and that’s a pile of redundant Mac boxes.

Bear this in mind, then, as you picture me on the verge of a split second decision about this particular Mac box.

“No, I don’t think so,” I said, in the time-honoured manner of British Nannies throughout the ages.

My son’s face prepared for war. It crinkled up in that outraged pruniness only little boys can seem to muster. “But I play with it! All the time!” he negotiated explosively.

I offered a silent prayer to Ms Poppins. “Darling, it’s a cardboard box. Cardboard boxes are not permanent. You can have it downstairs in the sitting room for two days, and then it goes to the tip.”

What I expected at this point was more spirited arguing. What I did not expect was broken-hearted sobbing. “But I love that box! It’s my box!” he cried, the tears streaming down his cheeks.

I know when I’m looking at a tantrum, and I am fairly good at spotting real human tragedy. This was the latter . My hard-nosed Poppins exterior melted. I relented immediately and the box was permitted to stay.

Felix parked it in my bedroom. And it wasn’t until after lunch that I looked at it properly and realised what a very precious object it must be.

It is carefully labelled in kidscript: “Good for: pranks, hiding, jumping out at people”. It had been named “The Shelter”, and the oval which once helped the Mac’s brand new owner to carry it away from the Apple Store is now a Spy Hole.

It is emblazoned with faces which carry outrageous expressions. It is a work of art. Tracey Emin, look this way. My children are clearly geniuses.