A Tale of Two Wardrobes......

Yes, and if either one of them had come from Ikea (or any of the other discount furniture warehouses for that matter) then it would doubtless have ended just as badly for the Carton, too........

But no.

Both wardrobes came from Emmaus, both were purchased in their fabulous half price sales, and neither came with any packaging at all, as they were secondhand.

So no Cartons, (named Sidney, Bill, Fred, or even Keith), were harmed in the making of this blog post, so you can all relax.

But I'm getting ahead of myself............

Cast your minds back to an earlier post which concerned itself with previous Narnia-themed behaviour.

("No Lyin', a Glitch with a Wardrobe" was it's title, though I'm ashamed to admit it.....)

This opus described the purchase of a certain item of clothing-storage furniture for one Mark Rogers Esq, of nb Norweigan Blue. ( A boat known to all on the Cam as "The Ex-Parrot"........).

In it, I related the, rather appropriately, Pythonesque struggle we had in attempting to load it aboard said vessel through an aperture which was simply not fit for purpose.

(If one is, in fashionable parlance, sufficiently "Down with the Kidz", I believe the correct description for this debacle is 'Epic Fail'.........).

Anyway, we left-off the story with Mark's wardrobe in one of my sheds awaiting the day we would take out one of the large (and very cracked) perspex side-windows on nb Fjord Piner, install wardrobe through window hole, then reglaze with sprauncey new crack-free perspex sealed with a suitably flexible dose of CT1 to prevent any crack-recurrence.

Well, all of the above has been done.

With the exception of the wardrobe-installation part...........

It remained very much in my shed for the duration of our glazing antics.

Now, this was not, I hasten to add, a result of the sort of oversight that would lend yet another strata to the already rich seam of comedic and satirical comments from others concerning our competence (or lack of it....)

Oh no.

It was simply that Mark had forgotten to consult his wife Sheena's opinion on the wardrobe's aesthetic value.

(While hindsight is, as ever, 20/20, even I can see that that was a mistake.........)

So, a couple of weekends back,we came, we glazed, then drank a lot of beer at a jolly nice barbecue Mark and Sheena had arranged at their mooring. Jackie and our neighbour Rhoda came along, as did James of Severner Willow and Other Amy (she of Pyewacket), who was subbing for Real Amy, who was otherwise engaged.

And a great time was had by all. Even the sun saw fit to shine!

But............, back in the shed,...............something lurked.........

Something large.

And wooden.........

Now, this wouldn't have been a problem, but for the fact that my sainted father was very keen to rid his garage of the last of my accumulated Alvis TA14 junk.

I duly went down to Bournemouth and picked it all up. (Leaving Dad's garage an echoing void in the process........

(Hmmmmm......... nature abhors a vacuum. I wonder what's going to fill it? One thing's for sure, it ain't going to be any sort of classic car that belongs to me!.....And that's a promise, Dad! :-)

But I digress.....

The poor old Suzuki Vitara Hairdresser's Car was groaning at the springs with spare cylinder heads, gearboxes, tools, paint, trim, and goodness only knows what other rubbish I'd managed to tyre-lever into the poor old thing.

This, of itself, was not, of course, a problem.

I'd had the foresight to secure the lease on a third shed from our landlord which I was going to fill with Alvisage.

The problem was that this shed space was taken up by a large, brown, unloved, and very unwanted wardrobe..........

"That's not a problem!" I hear you cry. "Just load it into the Vitara and take it back to Emmaus!"

Y-e-s......

And what is the Vitara full of.....?

And where does it all have to go.........?

(May I refer those who don't yet fully understand my predicament to the Harry Belafonte recording of that most excellent popular song, "There's a hole on my bucket'............)

Well, on Saturday it stopped raining long enough for me to wiggle out of it by craftily leaving the wardrobe in our car park while installing nearly two thirds of an Alvis TA14 in my shed.

So, problem solved, you might think?

Er, no...........

You see, after executing this Shed Tetris version of The Picard Manouvre, I made the schoolboy error of inviting James (from Severner Willow) to accompany me to Emmaus, to see if he wanted to buy anything in what was another of their half-price sales.......

I'll bet you can't guess what he bought!

And who picked it up and delivered it to his garage?

:-)

I'm going for a lie-down........