Two weeks ago, my daughter emailed to say she was coming to live with me for a couple of months. She’s been working abroad. I was delighted. One hour after moving in, she said: “Dad, you have to buy a new sofa.”
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.
“Nothing, except that you sink to the floor when you sit down.”
That evening at dinner she told me that my flat was full of stuff I didn’t need and should throw out. I think the phrase, “one big mess” was mentioned.
She said she’d ordered a declutterer to come over “to help you to sort things out”.
The next morning, Nicky the declutterer arrived. The first thing she said was that the sofa had to go.
“Watch this,” she said as she sat down on it. She disappeared completely from view. I found her and helped her to stand up. “It just needs a little plumping up,” I said.
“The springs have gone,” she said.
“By the way,” my daughter added, “you might want to read this”, handing me a book called Death Cleaning written by a Swedish woman.
“Do you realise that one day when you’re dead, Dad, I’ll have to spend weeks sorting through all your stuff. In Sweden, they do it all before you die. Isn’t that a great idea?”
“Happy to help you out… well in advance, I hope” I said.
Nicky quickly decided that 90 per cent of my possessions had to go into storage. “You need some space,” she said.
A container in a storage centre 16 miles away is now housing the entire Rosengard “collection” including a two-foot-tall beer mug shaped like a dog, a six-foot-long table-football game, a three-foot-tall ceramic gorilla and one life-size framed photograph of Mohammed Ali sitting surrounded by five former world boxing champions, signed by all of them.
I was thinking of opening it as a museum to the public but Steve, the storage centre owner, told me that, as only people under three foot six inches tall would be able to squeeze in — one at a time — it probably wasn’t a good idea.
On Sunday, we went to buy a new sofa. I’d seen an advert for a bright yellow sofa called the Schmoozemaster. Or maybe it was the Schnorrermeister, but clearly it was a Jewish sofa.
We walked into the store and there it was: the label read: “Schmoozemaster.”
“I’ll take it” I said to the saleslady. “Dad! You can’t just buy the first sofa you see!”
“But I fell in love with the Schmoozemaster at first sight,” I said.
The saleslady told me they’d take my old sofa away. “We give it to the British Heart Foundation,” she said.
“You’re sending a team of heart-attack victims to carry the Schmoozemaster up to my flat? I live on the third floor. That’s 62 steps.
“If four of them try to stagger up the stairs with that sofa, if they’re very lucky two might make it.”
“I’m sure we don’t use people who’ve had heart attacks to actually deliver it,” she said.
They charged £50 to take my old one away. “Why?” I asked. “They’ve got to go down again… unless they’re planning to move in with me.
“They can all just slide down the stairs reclining like Jacob Rees-Mogg on my old sofa. “Why do I have to pay for them to do that?”
“I’m sorry, but it’s the standard charge,” she said.
I suddenly remembered that I’d come in the store with my daughter. “Where are you?” I shouted.
“Over here, Dad. I need a death!”
“I know,” I said.
“A desk,” she shouted back. “I need a desk to study at”.
I found her at the back. A young salesman was standing beside her by a wooden desk.
“Hi. I’m Jake,” he said.
“Jake, tell me. What’s your favourite sofa?”
Well personally, I like the Schmoozemaster,” he said. “Jake, you’ve just made a sale. Are you by any chance a Jewish Jacob?”
“No. But I have been thinking of reading the Jewish Chronicle recently.” Go for it Jake! You don’t have to be Jewish to buy the JC.
One more reader of this column. Sofa so good.