Public nuissance : DIY edition

Unsurprisingly, the majority of our outings have been for the sole purpose of interior shopping. Not the pleasant kind. The wood-cutting / wall-measuring / sacrificing-sleep kind. Last night’s trip was equally unpleasant as we (Mother) searched for paint. Heading towards Miguel Angel – or ‘Michelangelo’ as Mother insists on calling him – and he instantly looks terrified, his reflexes telling him to run to the nearest exist.

“HELLO AGAIN! Now, I need your help. Paint. I want more paint. Let me see your colour chart.”

Having spent three hours at home deciding on the exact colour, it did not deter Mother from spending another three hours with several colour charts in her hand, looking at four colours that honestly looked exactly the same. Poor Miguel was keeping his patience but losing his balance and found another, shorter co-worker to lean on. Oh dear. Mother roped shorter-man into her dilemma.

“Nope. I’m going to have to take this chart home. Can you give me one to take home please?”

Miguel then apologetically told Mother that in fact it is not like England and these colour charts are for in-store use only…

“WHAT?! What on earth do you mean?!  What do people do when they need to choose a wall colour?!”

“Well usually they just come and tell me they would like. ‘Pink’ for example, and we go from there. They just sort of… know what they want their walls look like.”

We are now stuck in some horrible limbo where Miguel is awaiting Mother’s sudden decision and Mother is waiting for Miguel to come up with a solution to this “ludicrous Spanish policy”.

Ten minutes later and the awful silence is broken by Miguel; “un momento, por favour” – and he trots to the front of the shop (I assumed he was just exhausted and planned a getaway but apparently not).

“He’s going to go and photocopy the chart isn’t he, darling?! Well, it won’t come out right unless it’s a Canon.”

He trots back. The next few minutes were hideous as Mother not only proposed the idea of going against store policy and ‘borrowing’ the chart but persisted until the store closed. Poor Miguel had no other option than to detach the heavily-secured colour chart just to get rid of us.

Mother got precisely what she wanted. Naturally.

Travelling back to the land of bland

10:00am flights are a terrible idea. I shall spend the rest of my life avoiding such flight times when travelling with mother. I recall phrases such as “just shut up and give me a cookie!!” and “it’s better not to converse with me until after eleven ok? They’re called elevenses for a reason!” So I spent an hour driving to the airport with an irritable parent while I (the early bird) managed to keep a smile on my face and confronted the airport parking guys when we arrived. Mother became frustrated when she tried to explain that; “NO! I don’t want to give you my keys! It didn’t say anything about that on your website! How can I trust you with my car? This is absurd! Are you telling me that everyone does this?!” Crisis averted when a young, strapping Clooney-esque señor emerges from the offices and mother agrees to almost anything.

Oh dear. Flight is delayed. I’m sorry to say  this has happened each time we’ve flown from this airport and Mother makes it known to every airline employee she can find; “Do you know  how disorganised this airport is?! It’s preposterous! I just don’t understand! London never has this problem and that’s one of the busiest airports in the world! For goodness sake why is the system not working why is our plane late?? You better sort it out …*squints at name badge* Mariluz!” Mariluz (and the surrounding staff) appear unaffected by Mother’s outburst and continue checking passports.

Finally on the plane and Mother instantly looks disgruntled again. We haven’t taken off yet. I cautiously ask her what’s wrong; “No wonder I’m not married! We’re on an entire plane full of men and I happen to be sitting next to a lesbian!”

Approximately seven minutes into the flight and Mother announces she needs a drink. Waving down an air hostess – even after I advised her of the hostess-call button above her head; “No darling, I can’t just sit here and hope they see this tiny light, I need some brandy now!” – Mother then requests a ‘drinks menu’ of sorts and is shocked when the (budget airline) air hostess informs her that there are only two brands of brandy (excuse the pun). Mother is then ‘forced’ to choose and ­spends the next fifteen minutes making unnecessary disapproving faces at the plastic mini bottle and suggesting that all delayed flights should have complimentary caviar and champagne for all passengers.

The arrival in Brighton gave us both quite a shock to the system as we travelled down from Gatwick on the (smelly, dirty) train. Of course it was raining so we sloshed through the cigarettes and other questionable trash on the ground to arrive at the dullest store I know – a fabric store with boring employees selling boring net curtains for boring bores. I managed to escape into a display sofa with my very British (Danish) pastry. Hours later we ventured back out into the rain and we behaved as though we were new borns discovering precipitation for the very first time; lots of squealing and sheltering. In this process, Mother decided it would be a grand idea to photograph our fellow shoppers. This was the result:

and finally...

Looking at this optimistically, Brighton is now no longer 'home' but an unfortunate holiday destination.


Buenas tardes!
Charlotte-Elizabeth xoxo

A Series of Unfortunate Events - Pt 2.

A 9:30am wakeup call from a vibrant Mother explaining her ambitious plans for the day. I had to remind her that the glass fitters were due to fit our doors that day, which would inevitably throw everything out of sync.

The simplest of tasks are in no way simple when taken on by Mother. Basic Ikea unit; not used for the intended purpose at all but instead purchased as an attempt to disguise the ‘ugly’ bidet. Measuring done weeks in advance, however Mother managed to overlook the width of the bidet. So after hours of jigsaw-puzzling our way through the parts we discover that the unit doesn’t actually fit over the bidet. We then embark on the slow process of chiselling away half the back legs. “It’s not designed right! Look, darling, the screws are facing the wrong bloody way! Ugh, Swedish idiots. I want my French furniture, I want everything like my armoire, darling.” Post-chiselling and the unit (very) snugly fits… So long as it hovers over the bidet. The legs now don’t even reach the floor. So we have a floating unit doing a poor job of disguising anything. Mother then decides it’s ridiculous and proceeds to chop off all the legs. Then she decides she doesn’t like it at all anymore – so it’s now in a different room altogether functioning, in fact, as the unit it was first supposed to be. Minus the legs. The ‘ugly’ bidet is still exposed (tragic).

The glass fitters arrived at this point to exchange the cracked glass (fault of another tradesman). “The rug!!! Oh goodness, sorry, do you mind … just … can I just …” and Mother whips the vintage rug from under the unsuspecting man’s (perfectly clean) sneakers. I am automatically enlisted as tea-maid now apparently, so I put the kettle on and listen to the embarrassingly enthusiastic conversations from the other room. As we set out to construct the supposedly simplest of stools we are avidly eavesdropping, waiting to hear something smash but everything sounds fine.

*Ten minutes later*

“We’re all done, madam. We’ve just got to pop back sometime next week to seal it because the guys who came to measure here didn’t tell us you had black silicone, we only carry white silicone on the truck…”

“Oh, I knew it! I just knew we couldn’t complete one task! Right, fine, alright. Well when are you coming back because I’m a very busy person you know – you can’t just drop by unannounced I’m busy not like everyone else here this isn’t a holiday I have a business to run!”

I should also probably mention here that, of course, the glass wasn’t fitted without a glitch - the security bolt no longer fits.

Swedish House Ikea

As long as it’s not a weekend, Ikea is a fun day out. If, of course, you can actually get into the car park. Several lanes crossed, and we realise we’re heading for the motorway we’ve just come off. There’s no going back, no way. Until; “I am not going back on the AP-7! We’ll just have to back up!  I mean we are facing the right way so technically it’s fine. Come on darling, turn around and keep an eye out for the cars coming up behind ok? I’m going to reverse…” & with this warning we literally drive backwards up a road with young Spanish boys in their cars laughing at us as they swerve around our car.

We finally arrive twenty minutes later and I turn to Mother. Struck by her faux-pas; she has bright lilac eyebrows. Obviously she has not yet adjusted to her new makeup layout and unfortunately reached for the eyeliner instead of the eyebrow pencil – a fatal mistake. “Oh NO! Ughh I can’t bloody see anymore darling! Where are my glasses?!”

Our Ikea shop was fairly successful – minus the frequently irritated Mother who aggressively snarled at each and every child who got in her way; “why aren’t you  at school for goodness sake?!” We noticed the laid-back parenting technique most of the Spanish have adopted when we saw toddlers heading straight for the packs of scissors in the kitchen department. Had to restrain Mother from snatching them away. Apparently we are crowd-magnets; we want fabric? So does the rest of Spain. We want wooden tables? So does every husband in the store. It was at this point that I had to explain to Mother the Ikea process. She tried to lift a stool off the display, not noticing it had been screwed on. Her face fell when I told her we have to visit the warehouse with our list at the end and pick up the flat-pack items.

Many, many, many hours later we arrive at the warehouse and managed to pick up three out of four things from our list. Not good enough for Mother as she hunts out the fourth item. She’s told it is showing on the system that there is in fact one left but perhaps it is on a trolley because it updates the system when it goes through the till. This is actually good news for Mother as it is technically still within reach. She sets off subtly looking at everyone’s trolley to see if they have her chair. She didn’t find it but I still wonder what on earth she would’ve done if she had found it.