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Ah my old cream sofa, we’ve had a lot of fun together. You’ve been with me almost as long as this blog - I bought you some time in the first half of 2003 and you’ve been my main sofa ever since, through good times and bad. I’ve sat alone on you in my pants, I’ve canoodled upon you, I’ve spilt drinks and curry on you. My friend Rebecca warned me that a cream coloured sofa was a risk, but you were so soft and beautiful and I was a grown man and reckoned I could keep you clean. I was wrong, but we got by.
When my TV room moved down to the basement in 2012
you became stuck in the staircase and I thought I might have to chop you to pieces, but someone worked out how to take your arm off and you survived. We got nearly another six years of use out of you. We’ve had over 15 years together - it might be the longest intimate relationship I’ve had with anything.
But today, finally, it was time to say goodbye. The stains too deep, the cushions too saggy, inexplicably some glue on your lower left end. I never got round to cutting off the little bit of plastic that once held the warning about setting fire to you. It annoyed me every time I noticed it was still there, but I could never be bothered to get the scissors.
Some men came over and took you away and replaced you with a new younger model, whose turquoise might better hide the grime of the children who will climb on it and the old man in his pants who will spill things on it.
Ironically the men who delivered it had put it in their van without any plastic covering, so it’s started out quite badly stained. Which is a just punishment for daring to think that it could take the place of such an important bit of furniture.
So there’s a chance that the new sofa will only last as long as it takes to deliver a replacement. We’ll see.
Maybe this new sofa will out last me.
I know many of you enjoyed the sofa being stuck in the stairwell and I knew you’d want to know it had gone. Maybe the men will take it somewhere where it will be sat on by someone else. Perhaps it has gone to live on a sofa farm of some kind. I am sure they wouldn’t just burn it.
I meant to take a photo before it went, but maybe it’s best I remember it at its height. Unsullied by anything but my lonely tears. It’s been quite a ride old friend. You seemed expensive to me at the time but you probably cost me less than 5p a sit. That’s some value right there.
Sorry for the times I sat on you with no pants on at all. That was rude of me. But maybe not the rudest thing you witnessed.
I’d love to do a Facebook post mourning your departure but surely that would be way too over sensitive and mawkish. Not that that seems to stop anyone else.
Goodbye sofa. My last memory of you will be cleaning some of my son’s shit off you. If we’re honest, that might have been the nail in the coffin for you. It’s hard to come back from an indignity like that.
