diy

The temperature stays high overnight. I sleep badly and wake with a headache. My good woman is beside me so the headache bothers me less because she is present and more because I want to take advantage of her presence. 


She sleeps on while I grope my way up the dark driveway to retrieve the paper and relieve the bladder. I return to bed but the sleep that never gelled during the night continues to evade me. I get up and set about keeping 37 degrees of heat out of my house. I water the garden and fill all the saucers under pots.


I return to bed. My good woman stirs and groggily suggests that I read to her from the paper, but is asleep again before I finish a short article. I read the weekend magazine, the sport, travel and arts sections before my good woman unwraps herself from her winding-sheet around nine. 


She suggests we walk the dog around the local park before the real heat; it’s hot enough already so we sit and watch a game of cricket before trudging home. Finally breakfast. We chat as she drinks coffee and I nurse my headache. She bemoans the fact that she must pay a six-monthly visit to a Serb friend on the other side of town on a day like this of all days. 


My good woman has commented that my chair covers are filthy and this is a perfect day yow ask them. She’s right. I dump them in the washing machine, one load, then two. While they wash I sit and wait out my headache.

At four I drive through the heat. Ikea Richmond finally has the loft bed I’ve been waiting months for. I make a lightning raid, entering the refunds door and marching through the check-outs straight to Aisle 30. I’m in and out in less than 15 minutes. 


The time it takes to assemble the loft bed is inversely proportional. I start at five and finish the six-step ladder after nine. I stop at ever-decreasing intervals to greedily suck water out of a bottle. 


This loft bed is a major logistical exercise. I spread the wooden pieces around the spare room and spend almost half an hour nutting out what’s what, what goes where, and in what order it all happens. People go crazy trying to put Ikea furniture together. 


Staring at it for a while can make all the difference. So does reading the entire set of directions before beginning, in this case 40 pages of them. Two hundred and forty-six nuts, bolts, dowels, and small things I can’t name pull all the bits of black wood together. 


Once started, it comes together easily. I think this bed is an expensive item by Ikea standards, and they might have sent an assembler home with me.         


Rock on.