clivemurray.com

I had a chair.

It was a huge great black reclining job from Ikea, the Valhalla of household goods, and for a couple of years I loved it. I say reclining, it just had an extendable footrest that lifted up when you yanked the lever, a but like Joey and Chandler’s chairs in Friends.

But then I started to tire of the chair. The seat itself was a bucket style thing, and that just didn’t lend itself to eating dinner or sitting properly, so while it was great to recline in for an hour or two, it got uncomfortable after a while.

Recently I obtained a 2-seater sofa to replace the chair, and moved it into the bathroom until we could figure out what to do with it. It was going to go on eBay but we just didn’t get round to it, and this weekend - having suddenly been blessed with a load of free time in which to Get Things Done - I was threatening to take it to the tip. But my fiancée put an ad up on Gumtree and one on Craigslist saying that anyone who would come and get it could have it for free. It’s a big unwieldy thing too, so they would need a van or some such.

The next morning there were several replies, and a young chap with a Germanic or possibly Scandinavian accent said he would come round and take it, as he just moved into a new place and had literally no furniture. He turned up with his blue camper van, and liked the look of the chair, and we got it into his van easily, and he seemed very pleased with it. (I just hope he got it into his place OK.) At this point we had an idea regarding something else that I was needing to get rid of and couldn’t quite be bothered to eBay.

“Say, I don’t suppose by any chance you’d like an original Playstation? The PSX one? It has a few games with it…”

The look of unexpected joy on his face as he climbed back into his van carrying his new (well, quite old, but you get my meaning) Playstation was the highlight of my weekend.

What was yours?
–c.