I used to do removals for friends and family (see song : Number 73), however, after one hundred, I officially stopped, and am only avalable for consultancy.
That, of course, is all well and good on paper, however when ones mother needs a hand (waited 12 years to get offered a ground floor, and she gets it when I can’t drive!) all bets are off – consultancy ?
“No mum, pick up the box from the knees and stack it ontop of the microwave…”
It’s not going to happen like that. Nor did it. With the help of my wife, some very good friends, and two random teenage boys (oh sorry – my sons!), the removal was tiny, (on my scale) and swiftly complete.
The real work was not the physical lifting. Building a new bedroom, arranging furniture, ordering furniture, assembling furniture, installing curtain rails, installing the correct curtain rails, unpacking boxes, unpacking the shelves the boxes have been unpacked onto to repack them on the “right” shelves, dealing with the phone company, insurance company, power company (British Gas !!!!).
Somewhere in this list I had to assemble an IKEA sofa. Now I have extensive experience with IKEA (and B&Q, Argos, MFI…..) so this shoud be a straightforward task. The first hiccup is when I set some (essential) bolts down on a (clear space) window ledge, and half of them roll off behind a radiator.
Normally this would be a a very minor inconvenience, except that they do not fall behind the radiator itself, but rather into the partly peeling wallpaper, where – it so happens – a few other things have become wedged in the last century.
Access from under is barely possible, and made just that little bit more dangerous by the newly laid carpet grippers which (in defiance of the Geneva convention) run just under the radiator itself.
Four socks – age indeterminate, one oven mit (circa 1940) , some screws (not mine!), two corgi toy cars (1970’s?), a springy metal bar that might have been used to hang socks on, Anaglypta wallpaper – in stamp sized pieces, and finally, three Ikea bolts. All retrieved with my mums floor grabber, which did not quite fit. Of course there were plenty of “empty claw” moments, like some kind of perverse fairground atraction – Bad luck! No prize this time!
I’m not even going to talk about the TV cable, or the slot in floor where there (used to be) a sliding door.
Mum’s settling in very well thank you. Me? I went back to work in the middle of a new system install for a break.
Next week on IaDL: Glasses with prisms you say?
Dalmallyfest the Asylum 