DIY

Last night when Mr B got back we settled in to watch something rubbish on the telly and Mr B pronounced "This sofa is really uncomfortable". This is something I have been saying ever since we decided 14 years ago that a sofa bed from Muji was a good idea. It was not. It has not, as we hoped 'softened' or 'yielded' over the years, and remains as hard as rock and with a back-rest slope that gives you back-ache even just to look at it.

Since everything in our lives is still somewhat temporary (our 'nice' furniture all still being in Scotland dressing a house that will not sell) we have coped with this uncomfortable sofa since Mr B decided a few years ago that the other sofa we had was riddled with 'spores' and made him sneeze. So that went to the tip and we were left with the uncomfortable sofa and a single bed made to look like a sofa in the front room.

Until today.

After CarbBoy's basketball training and a brief trip around the market for me and MrB, we had an early lunch and piled into the car - with trailer attached - to go sofa shopping. We tried all the Trocs (second hand stores) that are still open - not many, I suppose in these straightened times no-one is trading up and taking their old stuff to these kind of places to sell to the likes of me.

We did find a good sofa set in one store and were all set to buy - making this clear by measuring up and getting a credit card out. Instead of helping us the sole sales assistant was having a very long discussion with someone who was clearly not buying anything. All it would have taken to keep us in his store was a tiny acknowledgement of our presence, a nod, a "I'll be with you in a minute" or indeed anything. Instead, we waiting fifteen minutes, then left. Sofaless. Leaving him short the 800 euros of our money he could have had.

We ended up in our next closest town, but the drive from Toulouse to Castres is long and, in a fairly slow vehicle with a trailer attached is very slow. In Castres it turned out that our very last possible Troc had, as the website indicated 60km earlier, closed. And so we ended up in the delightfully named 'But' buying just whatever they had in stock so that we didn't have to sit on an uncomfortable sofa tonight.

Anyway, drills were used in building it once we had hauled it back through the (by then) torrential rain. And the kids had a DIY lesson which a little bit terrified me. But it was all worth it. Proved by me falling asleep on the sofa for the first time in ages. And all that in front of Breaking Bad too.