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.
No comments:
Post a Comment