Friday, January 19, 2007

19 January: Home and Away

The new furniture that came last week was all carefully packaged in cardboard cartons, and inside those were layers of plastic sheeting, big chunks of polystyrene, and poly-something sheeting, all held together with enough sticky tape to remind me of Auntie Joyce (whose parcels were the stuff of family legend).

As we unpacked, we dumped the packaging in the garage. The old furniture is also in the garage, waiting to be disposed of - another problem.

The new bed needed assembling, and it was only when we had dis-assembled the old bed, stowed it in the garage, unpacked the pieces of the new bed and carried them upstairs, that we discovered that the packet of screws to fasten it together was missing. DH had to climb over the packaging and the old furniture to get to the shelves at the back of the garage, where he rummaged around and eventually (thank heavens!) found a packet of screws of a suitable size. Hooray!

This is a cliche that has never happened with any of the IKEA stuff we've bought - I was rather disappointed that it happened with something from John Lewis, which has always been one of my favourite shops.

DH took most of this packaging to the tip, but some polystyrene was left; I took this to the tip one morning, and as it was windy asked the men there where it should go, so that it wouldn't blow away. They said just to put it in the skips, and if it blew out they would get it back. Very unlikely, I thought, but what else could I do?

Most of it was last seen heading for the East Coast, released into the wild.

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Sensation!! Celeb Big Bro reveals racism!!

To quote -
Father, Mother, and Me,
Sister and Auntie say
All the people like us are We,
And every one else is They.
And They live over the sea,
While we live over the way,
But - would you believe it? - They look upon We
As only a sort of They!

(3 more verses)

All good people agree,
And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are We
And every one else is They:
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!) looking on We
As only a sort of They!

Rudyard Kipling understood how people view anyone Different from themselves as Wrong or Inferior. That goes for any sort of difference, too. Sad, isn't it, in this modern and sophisticated age, that we still only see the differences, instead of the similarities.

5 comments:

KAZ said...

Nice one Stitch (and Rudyard).
I hope Jane Goody and her mates read your blog when they get out.

Doris said...

I'm not sure if inherent racism will ever be entirely eradicated. We are, after all, just mammals, and our territorial, tribal natures are at the heart of our fears and mistrust of anything outside the pack. We have a bit of evolving to do yet.

stitchwort said...

kaz - I hope they don't. Not keen on a lot of shouting.

doris - but we do have the ability to choose, and to change our behaviour.

Christina S said...

Polystyrene is one of the things we aren't allowed to put in our recycling bins in Bury, I wonder if it can't be recycled? (Wonder where yours is now, lol!)

As for Big Brother, the whole thing has made uncomfortable watching - have had enough of it for this time!

Rog said...

Sorry for the delay Stitch. I've been trying to think of a funny comment related to a screw-together bed and can't seem to find one.