I was tempted to stay in bed all day today, just so I didn't have to see the sofa. If I couldn't see it then it wasn't there. But I got up to face the music and the slightly cooling embarrassment and shame.
Even though I had just written the blog about the sofa when I came downstairs to the kitchen I had somehow forgotten that it was there. It surprised me to see it and it made me laugh. Which was a good sign. I had not felt like laughing about it until that moment.
Luckily the builders were coming back to do some little tweaks and so I arranged for them to do that tomorrow morning and they agreed to help me with the surreal settee, so I decided to leave it as it was for now, for fear of damaging plaster and paint even more if I tried to do it myself. I tried to get a photo of me "sitting" in the wrong dimension, but it didn't quite work out, though I thought it would be quite apt if I killed myself in the attempt. It would have been pretty hard for anyone to be sombre about my death if that had happened. I am pretty sure my fate is to die in an ironic or comic or just embarrassing way. Which is why I am very careful if I am ever wanking with my head in a noose in a wardrobe. I keep the noose so loose that to be honest it shouldn't provide any kind of sexual satisfaction. But I am turned on by my own inadequacy so it completely does the trick.
It's astonishing how much my mood is affected by things like this. All logic dictates that one way or another the problem will be solved tomorrow and yet evenso my stomach churned and I felt slightly sick at the prospect of having to get something done. This is quite a spectacular example, but these little, niggling day-to-day issues do stress me out. A flick through the Yellow Pages and a quick phone call will solve most of them (but what if you ripped up your Yellow Pages like a Frankingstein?). But they play on my mind to a magnified degree and usually if I can get away with it I keep putting the thing off. I don't think I am very unusual in this, but it's annoying that I allow these things to get to me so much, just as it is annoying that I am so useless at anything practical. I have my own "skills" if they can be called that, but today I felt tired and ineffectual and it was really difficult to gee myself up to do any work or go out and do some exercise. And after about half an hour of reading about Tsar Nicholas II my eyelids felt heavy and my brain like it was in a vice.
Maybe it would have anyway and maybe the physical exertion of failing to move a sofa last night had taken its toll.
But we went out for dinner and then went to see "Ted" at the cinema - which was surprisingly entertaining with some genuinely laugh out loud moments. Certainly unpretentious and broad in its humour for the most part, but with some really lovely subtlety and carefree unselfconscious joy which is rare in films these days. In one bit they just recreated a scene from Airplane without any desire to explain it afterwards, just for the fun of it. And it had some of the best fart jokes I have seen in any film, which is a surprisingly high accolade. There's a bit where some businessmen get very angry about someone having farted and the over-reaction is so perfect and silly that it made me laugh more than anything has for a long time.
They also have an appearance from a one-hit-wonder 1980s film star which is just the right combination of piss-takey and celebratory, without turning him into the butt of the joke. It really cheered me up and made me forget about my sofa. They should put that on the poster without any explanation of context.
If like me you were a bit sniffy about going to see it then get over yourself and go see it. It's more like Airplane in spirit (whilst still doing its own thing) than any of the horrible diminishing returns Scary Movie style stuff that came in its wake.
My wife loved the fart gags too, which is ironic because she hates it when I do farts. Even though in the live situation there is the extra layer of humour that includes the smell. She is a hypocrite.
