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I went into Hitchin today because our new sofas were being delivered to our new house. The building work was supposed to have been finished by now, but inevitably there had been delays and we're still two or three weeks away, though things are looking good.
As I arrived at the house there was a strong toilety smell in the air. It was like stale urine and shitnd I wondered i. I hadn't noticed it before, but if our house smelled of dirty penises then it explained why the previous occupants had been so keen to sell. Have we made a terrible mistake?
I have to confess that it did cross my mind that the smell might be me. If that was the case moving to a place that smelled of stale urine would be the perfect cover.
It turned out though that everywhere I went in Hitchin today smelled like stale urine. Some might see this as evidence that I was the problem, but it wasn't. And it was a relief to know that it wasn't just our house. We'd get used to the stink, like people who lived in Bridgwater when the plastics factory was still operational. The poor stinking fools.
I was a bit worried that the sofas we'd ordered wouldn't fit through the door. The hallway is pretty narrow and there was a sharpish turn to get into the living room and we had ordered a four seater corner sofa.
There used to be a door to the outside from the living room, but this was one of the things we'd decided to get rid of, but coincidentally when I arrived the window we were having put in instead had not been installed and the hole was open. If the worst came to the worst we might get stuff in through there.
The sofa men rang to say they were 30 minutes away and I went to a nearby pub for a coffee. When I got back the missing window had now been put in place. Had the sofa men arrived even twenty minutes early this would be a valid entrance point. What were the chances?
Two men arrived in a van and I liked both of them straight away. One was quiet and thoughtful and the other a bit more brash and talkative, but unusually in a fun way! They were both in their fifties (I'm guessing) and clearly old hands at this job, even though the talkative one joked that this was his first day on the job. The quiet one examined the space and quietly said that he thought there was room to get everything in, but then he realised we had ordered a four seater and he wasn't so sure.
The talkative man seemed fairly calm and optimistic about our chances as the ceiling height was good, but kept up a sense of jeopardy. He told me a few stories about people failing to measure up correctly or measuring wall to wall rather than skirting board to skirting board or misjudging their space, but was adamant that his job was just to get the things in the house and anything else was the owner's issue. We'd probably ordered one too many chairs for the space, but we could move things around. For now I was just concerned about whether we could get the stuff into the house.
We'd ordered a big revolving chair that the kids had loved and I couldn't see anyway that that was going to get through the front door, but the men remained unperturbed, both reassuring and maintaining the charade in equal measure.
I am a man who can do basically nothing in the physical world and I was blown away by this duo's skills and perseverance. They removed packaging and then repackaged (we didn't want anything unwrapped yet or it would just get covered in dust) and edged massive things into tiny spaces in a way that I have never seen (outside certain specialist websites) and they remained chipper and unphased by the fact that I had ordered big chairs in a house with such tiny corridors.
The chatty one told me that they'd only once delivered the four seater sofa without having to take the arms off and indeed once the sofa was at the stairs, it was a matter of centimetres, but they needed to do that again. I guess when your whole life is about dealing with people who whose furniture eyes are too big for their arses that you either become a misery or a comedian and they accepted their lot in life, knew their super powers and just wanted to get on with the job. They would get the sofas in and then it's your problem.
Usually if someone with any kind of job finds out (or knows) that I write comedy they will say, "You should do a sitcom about where I work," and they are nearly always wrong. These guys did not (I think) know that I was a comedian and did not suggest I write about them, but chilled old sofa delivery men might actually make a fantastic sitcom. Different house each week, hurdles to overcome, a view into the life of the people they're delivering to, this unphased sensibililty and air of knowing they are superior to their customers, at least when it comes to navigating furniture through gaps, combined with a Waiting For Godot style sensibility of trying to make sense of the world.
As I've said I can't really be bothered to even attempt to get stuff on TV any more, but if Substack turns into anything that people are vaguely interested in reading and contributing financially to, I might write stuff for there. And if it's any good I might be able to use podcast money to do an audio or even film of some stuff (though at the moment there's no spare money in the bank account with people still to pay).
I've been having a go at writing up a short story for Substack with the freedom (that I have with this blog) that it's not meant to be a polished and finished product, but again that means I have the opportunity to polish the turds at a later date.
Anyway, miraculously they got the bog sofa in and even more amazingly they got the spinny chair in. Even once they'd unwrapped it and removed the cushions I would have bet that it wasn't going through the front door. These two unassuming (well one slightly assuming) men were magicians. They didn't even care that they were parked on double yellow lines for an hour. I felt safe with them and their jokes and stories were funny without me ever having to pretend to laugh at something I found morally questionable. They drove away, with another happy stupid middle class customer.
I drove to Waitrose where I was relieved to discover the dirty underwear smell was as thick and unpleasant as anywhere else in the town (again it could have been me).
When I got home there was an email from Waitrose saying "Smell that? It's premium coffee." So they were addressing the issue very quickly and I presume it was that coffee that goes through a cats intestines, but nice of them to solve the mystery (others said it might be fertilizer being spread on a local field and that it's an annual event, but do you believe them or Ian Waitrose?)
The final Ed Fringe RHLSTP this year, with someone who isn't at the Fringe but who won awards last year,
Lindsey Santoro.
