En route to my mum’s for dinner, I get a text from my sister, asking me to pick up my niece on my way past. I think that this is a slightly odd request, but happily swing by. I park on her drive. The handbrake isn’t working properly and the garage have done all they can. If it starts moving forward, I tell daughters 1 and 4, who are left in the car, just bail out. They immediately leap out the door and join me.
After a very quick hello, my sister seems keen to get me upstairs and it is then I realise the ulterior motive.
Do you want a desk? My sister asks, what I am soon to realise is a rhetorical question. Erm… I begin to reply. It’s from John Lewis, she continues regardless and there are only a few marks on it. I stare down at, what looks like a large scrape across the top. How much do you want for it, I ask sceptically. Oh no, you can have it…if you take it away now, she quickly adds. I look out the window at the poor, tired old Previa sitting on her drive and sigh. Ok, I say weakly. Oh and there’s a couple of bed side tables for mum, she says.
Getting the desk downstairs is stressful. The hallway has just been painted. Getting it out the door is stressful, the cat nearly gets crushed and then nearly escapes. Getting it into the Previa is not going to be easy. Firstly, I have to remove what is already in there, which includes things that I didn’t even know were in there. My sister is determined. She’s just passed her hostage negotiator course with the police, this is chicken feed. Don’t open that door, I shout at my brother in law, it’s the one that needs the screwdriver to shut it again. No, that seat is broken and doesn’t go forward anymore. Yes, I do need that bag of equipment for classes tomorrow.
After much to-ing and fro-ing, the desk and the bedside tables are in, but we’ve forgotten about the three kids who need seats. We take it all out, put the kids in and start again, working around them.
I very gently shut the boot, as four legs are dangerously close to the glass.
There’s also a chest of drawers, my sister says, rather too optimistically… and I speed off, no handbrake to stop me, without looking back.