Robyn Anderson

My chair arrived today. I ordered it in August. It is now the 2nd week of February but that’s what happens if you decide to buy a chair made in Norway by people, who if you are to believe the salesman, apparently only make chairs in the winter. It sounded reasonable to me and I have to say as someone who has purchased possibly the first chair made on their return, it is a system that should be adopted all over the world. The instant my not-inconsiderable-arse hit that seat I felt a caress of pressure in the lower back and in no time at all I was reclining with my eyes closed and a shit-eating grin on my face. When I discovered I could twirl it around I had to go and find the scissors and cut off the plastic wrap. During the gestation of my chair I’d worked out exactly where I wanted it to go. In the living room where the sofa stood in the middle of the room. This meant that the sofa in question, had to disappear. I thought this was perfectly reasonable considering there were already two cream leather sofa’s in the room and the one I’d been using had developed what you could politely describe as a hollow. Or more accurately a pit, at the end where I usually sat. I’d paved the way for the sofa removal months ago so there was no comment when we shunted it off into the spare room where it can sit in anticipation of making us vast amounts of money at the garage sale next month. I put the chair in the space left by the sofa, and it looked weird. Obviously that was the wrong place. And as I was casting around for somewhere better, I heard, ‘We need to push that TV down a bit and put the other couch on the other side and then it will be right.’ Now I don’t mind him having opinions on the weather, the news and indeed he can have them on the future of the world for all I care, but when it comes to how I want the furniture set out in the living room, he has one job and one job only. To lift or push when asked. I was confused. Why was he offering an opinion after all this time? Then I remembered that a couple of years ago I’d wafted the material I wanted for the drapes in front of his face and said really quickly, ‘whaddayathink? good?’ because it was quite a bit more expensive than I’d planned and if he said yes, that made it half price. Anyway, his suggestion today was rubbish. So I went and got the vaccuum cleaner while he went out to the garage to put a strip of metallic tape down the side of his boat. He’d been gone for half an hour when I thought, perhaps he had a point. That TV could move along a bit. But the couch was not going in the corner. I stood on the back step and said, ‘I need a hand to move the telly.’ I could see him holding the corners of his mouth in check in case a smile got the TV moved somewhere else. We pushed the 2nd couch to where the 1st couch used to be before I put the new chair there, then the telly got shunted along the wall where the couch used to be and the new chair went over by the glass sliders. All I could see was confusion and when I feel out of my depth like that I have to take charge of something, so I got busy with the vaccuum cleaner. It was a veritable treasure chest along that back wall. Lego, a wooden screw from another building kit, a knitting needle, a pen – even a wrapper from a marshmellow Santa Claus from 2019. And that’s not mentioning the cobwebs up the wall and all those wires and plugs that had to be wound up and rehoused. When that was done I lined up the big rug with the couch and I thought, nah. That’s not going to work. So I shunted the telly crossways into the corner (new position which should keep him thinking he’s sneaking into interior design decisions when he definitely is not), and put the couch back where it was. After that I pulled the rug over by the couch, repositioned the coffee tables and put my new chair back in the place where I’d first put it. And it all looks pretty damned good. Except for the reflection on the tv screen and we all know whose dumb idea that was.