Glad to report that the car is no longer spotty. It went in on Wednesday, and was ready for collection, washed, at a time that suited me well to tie in with a meeting in town. It's a shame, of course, that it has taken eight months to reach this point, and it reflects badly on SEAT UK and on the dealership, although escalation to the Chief Executive of the latter produced results rapidly. For the day the car was in, I was provided with a natty little Skoda Fabia with a distinctly sporting 999cc three-pot engine and a proper (DSG) gearbox. The bhp figure was the same as I had in my 2-litre company Monte-no-go back in the late eighties, and the low-end torque was impressive. VW-bashing is deservedly fashionable, but some (and not all!) of its engineering is pretty good. Just a pity that I practically need the help of a care assistant to get into and out of such low-slung vehicles: oh, and the seats are miserably uncomfortable.
I mentioned a while ago an abortive trip to the late Mr Kamprad's blue and yellow shop at Thurrock. Having not liked in the wood the bed we liked in the catalogue, we probably unwisely chose a simpler unit from the catalogue, and ordered it. (Ideally we'd have liked the same set-up as we have in the front bedroom, but it is no longer available.) I was a shade disappointed yesterday when the beds arrived in four long, thin packages rather than two bed-shaped ones: there was I thinking my days of reading pictogram instructions and wielding Allen keys were over. Anyway, we parked them in the garage while we prepared for our evening's entertaining, Martyn in the kitchen, I in the garden.
After a late-ish start this morning, we schlepped one of the long thin parcels upstairs, and without too much bad language, assembled a slatted bed frame. 'Hang on', we thought: 'if one parcel makes one half of a super-kingsize bed, what are parcels three and four for?' I had inadvertently double-ordered, dammit. Well, from there, things went from mildly annoying to familiarly frustrating, as is well known to customers of said blue and yellow emporium. The kits had arrived without the indispensable sub-mattresses. Cutting a long story short, we shall have a full refund, and all of yesterday's delivery will be taken away next Tuesday. But not before we'd had to dismantle and re-pack the two bed frames we'd assembled. I suppose the good news is that we've had more stair climbing and descending exercise than we have since the day we moved in. and the carpet in the back bedroom has had a slightly overdue thorough hoovering - and the customer service call centre agent was very helpful. We're no further for'arder with replacing the standard double divan, of course, but think we know where to look next. A physical shop nearby, where we can go and kick the tyres, as it were.
After a lengthy silence, Martyn prompted our local decorator yesterday to respond to our RFQ for painting the bedrooms and the garage doors. (As with Allen key wielding, we think our painting and decorating days are behind us.) It turned out that his reply had been languishing in his drafts folder. He has come back with a pretty good quote, so we're exploring the idea of having him come in and do the work while we're away in July/August. So we're counting on Ernie for a big win.
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