Time for a Change

(from 2015)

Mrs O suddenly decided that she wanted the bedroom furniture changed around. She insisted that it wasn’t “suddenly” – she’s been suggesting it for years but I don’t listen. So this last weekend, we risked life and limb to put the bed against another wall, and played musical furniture with the rest of the room.

I am now sleeping facing due south rather than due north, and although I get suspicious of words like Feng Shui I still feel the need for an orienteering course. At the moment, if I climb out of bed in the night, I run the risk of going on automatic pilot and heading straight out of the bedroom window...

The immediate problem was all the wardrobes and cupboards. They were all now the wrong side of the room for each of us. Just trying to get some clothes to put on in the mornings we would collide. So everything had to be emptied out and changed over.

It’s amazing just what we have found there – stuff that has been lurking for goodness knows how many years. Family history files going back decades. I’d wondered where some of those things had gone. Hidden behind my shoes apparently. Then more photos and stuff that we always meant to sort out, but never did. Nearly all of it can probably be binned, because we have it in electronic format – trouble is, we still have to check through it all just in case. Oh well – maybe next year.

Then my jars for collecting spare change. I did a post a couple of years ago on that, and Mrs O is still horrified to find how much cash in coinage I’m salting away. I repeat that any thief trying to make off with it all would give themselves a hernia, but it doesn’t seem to reassure her.

Then there is a collection of old suits that have magically shrunk. Neckties that others say I shouldn’t be seen dead in – but maybe they will come around again. If you wait long enough, things do come back. Trouble is, there is always some slight variation to show that what you have dug out of mothballs is – as we put it here – naff!

Games – from the days when we used to play board games, before TVs and computers and tablets took over. We still dig out the Trivial Pursuit on vacation and if feeling erudite, Scrabble. The rest could go to the charity shop.

Podiatry supplies that I lost and then expensively replaced have now re-seen the light of day. Sadly some have dates on them that are long extinct.

Then there is re-fixing the wiring – aerials and electrical wires – that sort of thing. At the present time, until I can burrow behind the wardrobes - which are so firmly fixed, if the house fell down they would probably still remain - there are interesting trails of wire and flex and stuff all over the floor. So if I don’t get out of bed and fall out of the window, I still run a severe risk of tripping and damaging assorted fixtures with my head.

They say the most dangerous place on earth is your home. You wake up in the morning feeling happy and relaxed and secure, and venture forth into an environment desired to trip you up, or cut you up, or blow you up. I can narrow that down a bit – the most dangerous place on earth at the moment is our bedroom.

And the lighting. Oh please, don’t get me started on the lighting!

Personally I could have lived on happy and oblivious in the old bedroom. I have been assured though that I am very fortunate. It’s not a complete refurb – it hasn’t really cost us any money – in spite of everything it’s the same bed, the same cupboards, the same wardrobes, and the same collection of stuff for which a room three times the size would still be insufficient. It’s just all - rearranged...

But that’s not the end of it. Now I am being vigorously encouraged to think of repapering the parts of walls that have been revealed after aeons of camouflage. The words of an old music hall song come wafting back through the ages:

When Father papered the parlour, you couldn't see pa for paste
Dabbing it here, dabbing it there, paste and paper everywhere
Mother was stuck to the ceiling; the kids were stuck to the floor
I never knew a blooming family so stuck up before.

Beam me up Scotty.