IT WASN'T A BABY grand, or even an upright or anything like that. It was only a bookcase, so I sensed something was definitely amiss when the carpenters began taking the front door off its hinges.

Within minutes, our cottage had been turned into a sort of NASA wind tunnel, our cats were weighing up whether to seek asylum at the local animal shelter and I was pondering whether my wife Elizabeth would forgive me if I deserted her for the next couple of months.

Some minion down at the Ministry of Useless Factoids theorized recently that in the league of human stress, moving home ranks No. 4, behind marriage, divorce and changing jobs.

Rubbish. I have been married four times and enjoyed each occasion, at least for the first 48 hours. The three divorces were events of great merriment, not least of all for providing a handy excuse for a major league booze-up. Changing jobs was a matter of exchanging the company of wretched bosses for better money.

No, No. 4 should be No. 1 without question. I have moved home 34 times in my adult life, including three times in one grim December back at the dawn of civilization, and my considered opinion is that to a greater or lesser degree, each was the closest thing I will come to hell on earth.

This latest is the worst. Elizabeth and I are more than two months into our move from an apartment in London to our cottage in the country, and the end is definitely not nigh. Rooms remain dotted with towers of boxes. Treasured possessions daily become candidates for the dump. For lack of space, the useful becomes useless.

Every time we think we spot a light at the end of the tunnel, it turns out to be another onrushing trainload of expensive problems. A shortage of places to hang three closets' worth of clothes meant built-in closets. A water boiler had to be replaced before it launched itself into orbit. Kitchen cabinets expanded exponentially.

Then there were the books. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. The love that others reserve for children, cars and shoelaces from around the world, I reserve for my books - and I am loath to part with any of them.

Mark Twain, Shakespeare and Suetonius are all treasures, "My Brother Was an Only Child" is thoroughly enlightening, and one never knows when one might have to dust off one's copy of "How To Build Your Own Swamp," particularly if our back garden gets much damper.

Nevertheless, with cold compresses to my fevered brow and Prozac to hand, I steeled my nerves, girded my loins and, as we packed up in London, set to the task of getting rid of hundreds of books, including my complete set of Stephen Kings, my Robert Ludlum novels and three spare copies of T.S. Eliot's "Old Possum's Book of Cats."

(I also said adieu to my volume of "Great Military Victories in French History" for lack of proof and on grounds that a brick would make a better doorstop.)

Still, that left us with several hundred books to haul down the highway and to find places for in Chard Cottage. With the same sort of almost mystic foresight that guided Captain Edwin Smith at the helm of the "Titanic," Elizabeth and I decided to have bookcases built.

Thus began the saga of the carpenters.

Now our cottage is a mass of angles and corners and vari-sized doors, constructed as it was starting in the 1790s and finishing at 2:04 p.m. on November 17, 2000. Moving items of any size inside involves the sort of planning that went into Apollo 11, the Kennedy presidential campaign and the one-way traffic system in Basingstoke, England.

Which is why my wife and I decided to have the bookcases built in situ, as it were. Our master carpenter, Allen, surveyed and measured and eyeballed the scene for the better part of an afternoon and decided to build the biggest bookcase in his shop and haul it in pieces up the stairs of the cottage.

Came the day and Allen and his three munchkins arrived with the bookcase - all 10 feet long of it. All intact, in one piece. I had a sense of foreboding not unlike that which Custer doubtless felt when the Indians gate-crashed his party.

They first hauled the bookcase down the side path and through the French doors at the rear. It promptly got stuck around a 90-degree bend in the hall.

Then Allen hit on the idea of getting it through the front door. An even tighter fit, I thought, but he dragged out his tape measure, checked various angles and said, "It'll go." The fact that he was bending the flexible steel tape measure around corners to chart a path for a very rigid bookcase appeared to matter not.

They got stuck again in the hallway, this time from the opposite direction.

"Not to worry," says Allen, and of course I did. Particularly when he announced he could get it through the upstairs French doors in the bedroom, which meant removing the heavy balustrade that protects us from sleepwalking onto the patio 12 feet below.

With the front door lying on the lawn, the balustrade leaning against the back wall and nuts and bolts scattered around like confetti, it looked as if we were dismantling our cottage and getting ready to send it to friends in South Carolina.

As I stood there in the wind that roared through the open front door, up the stairs and out the bedroom French doors, I pondered whether, if the respective IQs of the four carpenters were added, the total would reach double digits.

I suspected not when they got the blasted bookcase lodged between the bedroom door and the stairwell.

Now the bookcase is back in Allen's shop, getting sawed in half. The front door is back on and the cats have gotten over frostbite, but the balustrade still leans against the rear wall.

"See you in three days' time," Allen shouted cheerfully as he pulled from the driveway before I had a chance to take an axe to his pickup. I look forward to three days' time with the sort of enthusiasm I normally reserve for open-heart surgery, cauliflower and taking my cat Bear to the vet.

Meanwhile, I'm exploring the several obvious advantages of simply giving up reading. At least it would mean the front door would stay on its hinges.

Thought for the Week: Since I gave up hope, I feel much better.

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