Let me tell you about my birthday.
I had the day off, partly for birthday-related reasons but mostly because we were having a new sofa delivered so I had a very nice morning putting together my new Lego Y-Wing (it’s utterly lovely, if slightly fiddly thanks to loads of little pieces providing suitably authentic greebling. The engine nacelles were particularly fun to assemble and particularly awesome-looking) and playing some FIFA (fun but flawed – the excellent “Be A Pro” mode that sees you controlling only one player is ace for giving you ten other people to blame for your terrible performance).
About half-eleven, the sofa arrives. Delivery bloke ambles through the hallway, has a good look around and declares that It Is Good. He goes back to his lorry and gets the sofa which then completely fails to go through the front door. Delivery Bloke requests that I remove the front door, but initial attempts to remove the screws holding the hinges in prove awkward and mean an estimate of about half an hour to get the bloody thing off. Delivery bloke declares he has other deliveries scheduled and so can’t hang around. Delivery bloke sods off.
Bear in mind that the previous night we spent three hours plus dismembering the old sofas and carting them out the door, so we now have – count it! – no furniture in the living room.
I call my wife, who a) bought the bloody thing, b) was assured by the salescreature that it would go through the door and c) made doubly-sure by making a template of said sofa and checked it against said door. She calls the store and throws a wobbly. They tell her that the delivery blokes will finish their regular deliveries then fit us in at the end, and call us well in advance of their arrival so I’ve got time to get the front door sorted. Elaine says that as soon as she knows the time, she’ll arrange to head back from work to give me a hand. Coolio I think, and get back to pinging proton torpedoes at the cat and trying to break into the FC St. Pauli first team.
Half-one, I get a call from Delivery Bloke. They’re on their way and will be with me in 10 minutes. Cue panic. Elaine has to cancel her afternoon patients and comes rushing home, arriving pretty much the same time as Delivery Bloke, whereupon a second inspection reveals that the living room door’s going to have to go as well along with an extra block of wood that’s been attached to the frame to allow a smaller door to fit the door-hole (industry term). The door itself comes off easily enough, but the frame refuses to budge and eventually causes Elaine to attack it with an electric saw. Still, after maybe 20 minutes all the offending bits of our house have been removed and Delivery Bloke goes and gets the sofa.
Which still doesn’t fit through the front door.
Elaine calls the shop and throws Wobbly II – Judgement Day. Shop are singularly unhelpful, my personal highlight being when they asked if we had patio doors that we might try to get the sofa through. Oh YES! Because if we had patio doors, we DEFINITELY would have spent the last half-hour MUTILATING our sodding HOUSE to try and FIT THE COCKING THING THROUGH THE BLEEDIN’ FRONT DOOR, wouldn’t we?
Meanwhile, Delivery Bloke is on to his boss, who suggests that if we’re willing to risk a bit of scuffing we can try completely unpacking the sofa, chucking a blanket over the upholstered end and see if we can wedge it through the door. Given the huge sofa-shaped gap in the front room, and the fact that in a house with three kids, two dogs and a cat the bloody thing will end up hammered in no time anyway, we’re desperate enough to give this a whirl. And bugger me, if it doesn’t work after the necessary application of brute force and ignorance. Elaine and I collapse in an exhausted heap of stress until four hours later when I head out to go to poker and discover I’ve left my car’s lights on all weekend and flattened the battery.
Aaaaaargh.
