STAIRS AND CARPETS

"Ooh, steady mate," he said at the other end of a large cardboard box.

I'd just fallen up my own stairs. I wasn't in the mood to be called 'mate' by someone I'd been acquainted with for 37 seconds.

Anyway, regardless of all that, I now have a perfectly serviceable bed. Well, I should say: I have three boxes and an enormous mattress stacked up in the room that hasn't had its carpet cleaned.

Yes, the room that hasn't had its carpet cleaned.

At around 9:15 last night, having swept and vacuumed, I plugged in the enormous carpet cleaner I'd borrowed, filled it up with the requisite combination of solutions, and switched it on.

The walls started shaking, the floor jumped up and down and the flat was suddenly filled with the clunking, whirring sound of a small locomotive engine. I quickly switched the cacophanous machine off. There are a limited number of times you can annoy your neighbours.

Why are these things so noisy? I'd rather get down on my hands and knees and scrub until the sun comes up than annoy the people who live around me.

So anyway, the bed had to be delivered first in the end, which gives me an interesting weekend.

Actually, provided I can find a good time to quickly roll the leviathan across the carpets without causing earth tremors or giving myself an ASBO, I reckon the weekend will mostly be going into battle with my furniture, armed only with a set of allen keys.

I can do this, right? I can do practical stuff without doing myself an injury?

Mind you, I did fall up the stairs today.