I was having a particularly vivid dream in
which the nation was overrun by escaped prisoners and I’d volunteered to go to
prison as the country was now facing a shortage of them when my phone beeped.
At five past seven. Yesterday when I’d ordered the bookcases, Argos had said “We’ll
ping you an email or text to say when we’re on our way”, and so they did. They
said they would be with me within two hours. It was a shame that they couldn’t
be more specific than that two-hour window. I suppose Amazon’s live tracking
has set the bar rather high.
So I made toast and
checked the Internet whilst I waited.
A good friend was
posting videos of his house. Having spent years being moved from one temporary
house to another he finally got his own place over the summer… which is now
flooded out from last week’s rains.
Other people had posted
piccies from firework events. Some went ahead in Sussex last night; the rain
must have held off. And again the mention of fireworks set off the pro- and
anti- firework brigades. Personally I quite like looking at the things, but do
they have to make such loud explosions?
I saw that I had loads of emails about having
bought the bookcases, and ones telling me that they were on the way (!)…
and suddenly I realised that an hour had passed and I’d done nothing but look
at drivel on Facebook whilst waiting for these bookcases.
They arrived just
before nine o’clock, and I spent half an hour getting progressively more and
more angry with the things. Like all flat-packed furniture, rather than coming
with instructions they had frankly incomprehensible diagrams (with not a
single written word on them) which meant absolutely nothing to me. I was
all set to book a slot at the tip and just throw the things away (and good
riddance to them!) and go buy a pair of proper pre-built bookcases, but “er
indoors TM” wanted a go. So I left her to it and took the dogs
for a walk. And made myself quite breathless in doing so.
After she’d been fighting with the bits for a couple of hours “er
indoors TM” came to the conclusion that both of the flat-packed
bookcases were missing a vital piece. “er indoors TM” arranged
for the missing pieces to be sent on to us and decided to get as far as she
could with the bookcases… but the missing bits wouldn’t arrive for a few days.
I wasn’t happy. My whole plan for today
hinged on getting the bookcases up and in place and I seriously wanted to have
a little bonfire in the garden to get rid of the things if only out of childish
petulance.
An hour later she announced she’d found the
missing bits. Oh, how I laughed.
As she cracked on with the bookcases so I cracked on with the
project I started on Friday. I made a start at updating my list of favourite books (well, it’s
bookcase-related). After a while there was some minor consternation when “er indoors TM” announced
she’d put the drawer runners on back to front. So I went up to help and put
that hiccup right whist she cracked on with the building.
The plan for today was to have the bookcases built by mid-day
and then spend the afternoon putting stuff onto them and generally getting tidy.
We stopped working on the bookcases at eight o’clock this evening. They just
need the adjustable shelves fitting; we’ll do that in the week.
No comments:
Post a Comment