Come Sit With Me

The unpacking's done and the purchasing is beginning.

This is bad news for the RD economy but seriously good news for any shop within a certain radius of RD Towers.

Minimal is the word. Classy, stylish and tasteful are some more words and they're ones I'm trying to keep at the forefront of my mind. This is a hard task, as it seems right now that all my thoughts are jostling for position at the front of my mind. Do you ever get that? Prioritising's all well and good, just not when everything's in at number one.

With a relatively small living room I'm doing all I can to make good use of the space, particularly as the electronic drums are essential but not exactly great in terms of the whole space saving concept. If I was a singer things would be much easier, though I'd have my ego to carry around and singer's egos are always a big issue.

And, for maybe the first time ever, I'm pleased, I mean really pleased, that I'm about three feet shorter than the average Sri Lankan male, so short that I don't get any bigger as I walk towards you. Why? I hear you asking.

Because over here settees can be bought in several sizes. There are three seater and sometimes four seater ones, two seater and then "compact" two seaters. These compact ones, well you can probably figure it out but I'll explain anyway, are smaller than the regular two seaters but will still take two people.

An average sized Sudda would struggle to sit on one, let alone lie horizontally with a stomach full of rice and curry and watch TV while falling asleep. Things for me are different. I can lie on one and there's enough space between my feet and the arm of the settee for Duplication Road to sidle in comfortably, I can sit on one without that feeling of floating in a sea of sofa that is so common for me on other ones.

If you'd walked through the furniture department of John Lewis yesterday you may have seen a good looking bloke lounging on one of these compact two seater settees with a smug and content look on his face. That fellow was me. I was having an epiphany, even though it was Easter Monday.

I was excitedly realising that a compact two seater might be the way forward, that it could be the answer to many of my questions. The thing is that I don't expect to be entertaining many people that often. There'll of course be C when she's over here and the girls on Wednesdays and alternate Fridays, but that's pretty much it.

The odd friend here and there and of course my Mum about three times a day but that's about it. The thing about post divorce life is that the dinner party circuit dries up and socialising becomes something that's done more out than in. It's also a symptom of kids getting older too, even though they're not with me.

All this rambling is just to try to explain my dilemna; that I need seating for the rare influxes of people, but mostly I need just enough for me. I must add here, isn't spellchecking mad? I just ran one as I wasn't sure if the word "influxes" is a real one. According to blogger's spellcheck thing "influxes" is fine, but "seater" doesn't exist. Well Mr Blogger Spellcheck, how come I was sitting on a two seater then?

So there I was, sitting on the compact two seater and feeling epiphenous (I'm pretty sure that word really doesn't exist), and I realised that I might be bold and courageous and buy it.

It was RED!

I should really say it IS RED.

My thinking is that a red settee would be modern, in that specific design at least, it would be bright and, most importantly, it would match the new mega expensive oven glove. The compact element means that I can fit in two trendy single seater chairs as well, probably in man's black leather, with a trendy and minimalist style.

I didn't buy the red settee there and then but the more I think about it, the more I look at the brochure and the more I look around, the more I know that I almost definitely will.

I sat in one of my three local pubs last night, sipping a rather decent pint of Asahi lager and read my copy of Good Housekeeping. There was a group of merry, bordering on seriously drunk, people next to me so I hid the magazine in a copy of the Gay Times to avoid embarassment. This furnishing business is quite an art really.

I could get into it.

Must go, there's a bookcase I need to look at.