Tables and chairs

 

The problem with this not posting every day shtick is that you’re missing so much prime A Day in the Life blog material.  Yesterday, for example, when the final exchange with Bozo* was only the beginning.  Eleanor, who is manifestly insane, has kept nagging me to let her come help with putting Third House in order.  All right!  All right!  Whatever!  If you are so hopelessly short of interesting things to do with your time BY ALL MEANS COME!  So while she was hoovering floors and mopping shelves I was trying to force all the books that are coming off the shelves in the Mostly a Staircase Ex-Bedroom which is going to be Peter’s office after we hack out a HOLE IN THE BOOKSHELVES for his desk to go, onto a much shorter wall of mostly-recently-frantically-emptied shelves.  This is a seriously arrrgh situation anyway** AND IT GOT A LOT WORSE WHEN ONE OF THE LITTLE BRASS DOOHICKEYS THAT HOLD THE ADJUSTABLE SHELF IN PLACE FELL OUT AND 1,000,000 BOOKS RAINED DOWN AND RAINED AND RAINED ESPECIALLY WHEN THE BOOK-SHAPED CANNONBALLS MANAGED TO TAKE OUT A COUPLE OF OTHER [FULL] SHELVES ON THE WAY DOWN, ONE OF THEM ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROOM.  And then Eleanor’s hoover, which she had thoughtfully brought, which is just as well since mine is usually full of wood chips***, TURNED ITSELF OFF AND WOULDN’T TURN ON AGAIN.  Because its bag was full.†

Nina’s son is moving into his first flat—he’s been sharing a house and apparently furniture is not necessary in this situation.††  But the new flat is empty and Nina asked if any of our moaning about excess furniture might yield a spare table and four chairs?  Yes.  It certainly would.  So Nina and her wholly adorable husband Ignatius††† came down with a van and we played Musical Chairs [sic] for which we jigsawed around at grave danger to life and limb at our storage unit, extracting my old kitchen table from Maine and three of the four chairs that go with it—three because we’d need a forklift and a hoist to get at the fourth—and then a few odds and ends because why not, and drove interestingly in convoy‡ with Wolfgang and me loitering at corners as necessary, arrived at Third House, extruded one chair and the odds and ends, examined the Dishwasher Problem‡‡, proceeded on to the cottage where my old Maine table was swapped in for the bigger heavier Dickinson table which was great when I first moved in to the cottage but has grown mysteriously bigger with every additional critter crate, and then on to the mews where we swapped out two chairs.  And then Nina and Ignatius fled, because they still had to get all their loot up to London in time to get the van back to the van-hire.

We’d simply left my new/old table in the middle of what there is of a kitchen floor at the cottage, which isn’t much.  Both tables are drop-leaf, but the Dickinson table is rectangular and its leaves only barely clear the floor so when you put one up–and you can only put one up–it’s skating rink sized and grazes the hellhound crate so you absolutely can’t get past it unless you go under.‡‡‡  My table is round, and smaller, and the theory is that the little half-moon leaves will be usable, even in an square inch-age challenged area like the cottage kitchen.

I went back to the cottage with a happy rioting puppy§ and . . .

Had a very, very, VERY bad moment when I discovered that while my little round table is smaller, the curve means it doesn’t quite fit in the space that the straight line and square angled bigger table fitted in AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGGGGGH.

. . . No, it’s okay.  With a little weaselling the sticky-out curved edge of the table will clear over the hellterror crate so the table will settle back against the wall.  WHEEEEEEEEEEEW.  And yes, the modest half-moon leaf means I can actually sit at a table to drink my tea if I want to.

So yaaay.

* * *

* He hasn’t bothered to answer mine saying ‘please check back through this correspondence’ YOU UGLY RABID MEATLOAF.

** Especially when you started late because a hellhound threw up on the floor just as you were trying to leave and this is not something you’re willing to come back to in its original unaltered state.

*** Atlas is a wonderful human being and he’s a MAN who knows how to USE A HOOVER.^  What he does not know is how to (a) check the bag and (b) change said bag when necessary

^ Penelope says she married Niall for his hoovering.  One never tires, she says, even thirty years later, of having a husband who does the hoovering.  –In this household neither of us does the hoovering.+

+ Although Peter’s home help will employ a hoover if asked politely.  And my floors aren’t as bad as you might think BECAUSE THEY GET CLEANED REGULARLY AFTER DOGS HAVE THROWN UP ON THEM.

† Because Eleanor’s husband had been using it and hadn’t checked the bag.^  She immediately rang him up and ordered him to bring her a new one.  And he did.  Golly.

^ Niall also changes the hoover bag.  It doesn’t get better.  Although champagne is close.

†† They sit on the floor a lot?

††† I know he’s been a friend of the extended Dickinson clan since he and Nina were kiddies but they only got together a few years ago and he does the whole troublesome-in-law thing with such grace.

‡ Driving a hired van full of furniture is such fun.  Not.

‡‡ Which is that Peter comes with a dishwasher, and Third House doesn’t have the gap or the plumbing behind the gap for same.

‡‡‡ Since I don’t believe in wasting space of course there is stuff under the table.  But trying to jimmy something out without putting a leaf up is . . . bruising.  And somewhat liable to cause language.

§ You’re going to be two in August.  You wouldn’t like to think about starting to grow up, would you?^

^ Conversation with little old lady watching Pav loop the loop:  she’s very young, isn’t she?  Um.  Yes.