Sofa so good, but so long
Remember those mariners lost at sea who spied a bird flying overhead and saw how it stayed with them, then followed them? We’d call it stalking today.
It was nae a tweety bird but a great big albatross and they knew no good would come of it. And no good did.
Well, into every life comes an albatross; a thing that’s with you for a long time and mostly just in your mind.
Or that’s what people will tell you. See, we had this big beautiful dark green button-tufted leather couch which we sat on, laid down on and so did the pets who in that other life shared our days and nights.
When it came time to up stakes we said that green couch must come with us, as indeed it did.
We thought that the end of it but the naysayers had much to say.
‘‘It is too big. It smells of dog. It is too old. It looks out of place in this modern de´cor. It is blocking the doorway, Get rid of it .’’
They won the day.
To the relief of everyone younger than us (that’s everyone in our family) it left yesterday, donated to a favourite charity, replaced by an untufted donkey grey brown three seater - a match for a two seater the same.
Before going off to the charity store, that couch had travelled to and from Nightcaps twice with much swearing from those charged with the heaving in and out of its long, heavily inert frame.
It was safe with us when Bill Todd cleared out everything at auction.
But then the pressure was on: get something smaller, better, newer, matchy-match and we bowed to that pressure and are happy with the result.
Modern day mindfulness insists that we stay in the moment but doesn’t say which moment and, heavens, doesn’t every life hold so many, albatrosses competing with tweety birds?
Sometimes memories take us back a long way to a funny ‘‘boot-room’’ at school, chattery typewriters at work, the endless cycle of a washing machine, helicopters overhead.
Other times we are right here, wondering why this phone doesn’t ring and this one never stops, marvelling at the simplicity of a new microwave, grateful to live in an age of quick-dry, no-iron clothes dryers, thinking how stoic refugees with nothing to look back on and just hope ahead, hope that the haunt of the mythical albatross is replaced by a cheerful tweety bird.