I have gone to the considerable effort and determination to secure myself a South East Londoner.
Everyone should have one. Tough but fair, loving but not afraid to tell you when you're being an absolute wanker. Also unable to sugarcoat, or indeed keep to themselves, any opinion whatsoever they have on any topic, regardless of their personal knowledge levels on the matter. It is a graceful and rich dance of blagging, beautiful to watch. Apart from the drop in the quality of my enunciation (that got an actual lol from my friends when i moaned about it - apparently my Australian accent disqualifies me from criticising dropped tees and silent aitches), most days, i am so irritatingly content that i want to punch myself in the throat.
He does have some odd habits - he loves cunty shoes, and has quite the collection. The shoe equivalent of a kick to the face, one pair looks like someone took a crocodile head, emptied it, stitched it up and cut a hole in the tops for feet. He also likes to keep bags. All sorts of bags. I think he convinced himself long ago that he would just let them build up until they reached a can-be-bothered number, when he would eventually take them to the charity shop/recycling, but that day is yet to come. Maybe before the nuclear winter. Also loves (when i say loves, i mean hoards) trousers in primary colours, lairy shirts, dubious plaid jackets, cable-knit jumpers, sloppy hoodies, and gym gear. (Gym gear without a gym membership is actually chav gear, i keep telling him)(not that i can throw doughnuts at battered savs.)
So with all this stuff, when he moved in, we had to upgrade the wardrobe. A paltry two-door pine affair that simply wasn't going to cut it - the lairy shoes alone need a room to themselves, if not for their number, but for their offensiveness. The poor pine wardrobe would never have survived; once filled with such hideousness, it would have trembled and yawed, both doors bursting open in a soundless scream, before splintering into millions of wood chips down a materialising wormhole straight to hell.
Not wanting to spend a lot of money, we chose to buy one from Littlewoods. It looked so nice and solid in the picture, heroically standing up, storing clothes and whatnot, behind three fake mahogany doors. It looked like a safe and loving haven for a shared life, like someone's kindly dad. We bought it. It was discounted, 260 licks.
It got delivered in the first week he moved in. We unpacked it with gusto, both of us determined and patient, an unsaid echo of our attitude to our new commitment. It came in two packages, together weighing a hundred kilos.
The first night, the night we had been duped into thinking we might be able to put this together by midnight, we only got as far as labelling all the parts with the numbers itemised in the instructions. There were 107 parts. It was only on the very last part (this is, unfortunately, not a lie for the sake of a good story, it really happened) that we discovered they were already all labelled with tiny little white stickers. When I say little, I mean look at the crescent moon on your thumb nail, write something really important on it like your pin code, then try to get someone else to read it back to you.
After crying for a bit (me crying, and him trembling with rage-induced giggles) we went to bed, determined that tomorrow night would be better.
Night two: we reviewed the instructions before starting, we conscientiously re-reviewed. Finally, we were ready to assemble. You had to put it together on the floor, and then raise it up like an Amish barn, triumphantly and satisfactorily, ready to start your life together, with your barn, your happiness, some sunshine and clothes and stuff.
No. Just.. No. A whole world of no. The frame wouldn't stop flexing every time we put the bottom bit into the top bit. it was one or the other, one would go on and the other would pop out. It was an hour later, after yelling at it, yelling at each other, yelling at ourselves, crying, sighing, starting again, that we finally coordinated our slotting with CERN precision, and finally the top and bottom went on at the same time - and stayed on. The frame was together! We heaved the hundred kilo back-less and door-less frame to about 30 degrees off the floor before we heard the sound of the last oak tree on earth being ripped out from the Amazon rainforest - the bottom physically splintered out of it's joins, the rest of the wardrobe falling back to the carpet with an almighty 'Whoooommmph' which woke up every flatmate we ever had in the history of our lives. We stood there speechless.
The whole thing was a cruel joke, some utter bastard in an ironic industrial design firm somewhere, laughing his/her fucking head off, sold us an impossible dream: the structure physically unable to exist on this planet with physics the way it is. The joins do not, have never, and will never, support the weight of the materials, the entire thing some crazy proposal, like a kid with an umbrella on a carport roof.
We looked at the felled monster and both of us were struck with trepidation. This had somehow become a symbol for our relationship, moving in together, and all that would come of it. If the wardrobe didn't work, what chance did we have? We had to get this wardrobe together and make it work.
Night three: We came home with an electric drill. We came home with nails, brackets, screws, glue. We came home with a glue gun. We bracketed, screwed and power stapled the shit out of that wardrobe. We robustesized that shit. In the end it was more machine than wood. We looked at the abomination. It wasn't going to lean anywhere now motherfucker, not only that, due to the extra hundred or so kilos in reinforcements, it also wasn't going to be moved anywhere either, that fucking thing is staying put for good. When they knock the building down to make way for a sky road in 2075 they'll have to blast this unscathed box sticking out of the rubble with a galactic missile. Nervously, we enrolled the rest of our housemates and we heaved that barn onto its steeled feet, it weighed a ton. But there it stood, triumphantly vertically, unmoving, solid. We'd done it, we'd saved our relationship, we'd raised our barn, we faced a bright future.
My South East Londoner took my hand into both of his, he looked at me, and he said: "I love you so much. I couldn't love you any less."
Wow, the romance. I was sold, I'll keep my South East Londoner.
Post note:
Last Tuesday the main rung collapsed inside the wardrobe. To date we've left it that way and currently keep our clothes folded on a bookshelf.
Everyone should have one. Tough but fair, loving but not afraid to tell you when you're being an absolute wanker. Also unable to sugarcoat, or indeed keep to themselves, any opinion whatsoever they have on any topic, regardless of their personal knowledge levels on the matter. It is a graceful and rich dance of blagging, beautiful to watch. Apart from the drop in the quality of my enunciation (that got an actual lol from my friends when i moaned about it - apparently my Australian accent disqualifies me from criticising dropped tees and silent aitches), most days, i am so irritatingly content that i want to punch myself in the throat.
He does have some odd habits - he loves cunty shoes, and has quite the collection. The shoe equivalent of a kick to the face, one pair looks like someone took a crocodile head, emptied it, stitched it up and cut a hole in the tops for feet. He also likes to keep bags. All sorts of bags. I think he convinced himself long ago that he would just let them build up until they reached a can-be-bothered number, when he would eventually take them to the charity shop/recycling, but that day is yet to come. Maybe before the nuclear winter. Also loves (when i say loves, i mean hoards) trousers in primary colours, lairy shirts, dubious plaid jackets, cable-knit jumpers, sloppy hoodies, and gym gear. (Gym gear without a gym membership is actually chav gear, i keep telling him)(not that i can throw doughnuts at battered savs.)
So with all this stuff, when he moved in, we had to upgrade the wardrobe. A paltry two-door pine affair that simply wasn't going to cut it - the lairy shoes alone need a room to themselves, if not for their number, but for their offensiveness. The poor pine wardrobe would never have survived; once filled with such hideousness, it would have trembled and yawed, both doors bursting open in a soundless scream, before splintering into millions of wood chips down a materialising wormhole straight to hell.
Not wanting to spend a lot of money, we chose to buy one from Littlewoods. It looked so nice and solid in the picture, heroically standing up, storing clothes and whatnot, behind three fake mahogany doors. It looked like a safe and loving haven for a shared life, like someone's kindly dad. We bought it. It was discounted, 260 licks.
It got delivered in the first week he moved in. We unpacked it with gusto, both of us determined and patient, an unsaid echo of our attitude to our new commitment. It came in two packages, together weighing a hundred kilos.
The first night, the night we had been duped into thinking we might be able to put this together by midnight, we only got as far as labelling all the parts with the numbers itemised in the instructions. There were 107 parts. It was only on the very last part (this is, unfortunately, not a lie for the sake of a good story, it really happened) that we discovered they were already all labelled with tiny little white stickers. When I say little, I mean look at the crescent moon on your thumb nail, write something really important on it like your pin code, then try to get someone else to read it back to you.
After crying for a bit (me crying, and him trembling with rage-induced giggles) we went to bed, determined that tomorrow night would be better.
Night two: we reviewed the instructions before starting, we conscientiously re-reviewed. Finally, we were ready to assemble. You had to put it together on the floor, and then raise it up like an Amish barn, triumphantly and satisfactorily, ready to start your life together, with your barn, your happiness, some sunshine and clothes and stuff.
No. Just.. No. A whole world of no. The frame wouldn't stop flexing every time we put the bottom bit into the top bit. it was one or the other, one would go on and the other would pop out. It was an hour later, after yelling at it, yelling at each other, yelling at ourselves, crying, sighing, starting again, that we finally coordinated our slotting with CERN precision, and finally the top and bottom went on at the same time - and stayed on. The frame was together! We heaved the hundred kilo back-less and door-less frame to about 30 degrees off the floor before we heard the sound of the last oak tree on earth being ripped out from the Amazon rainforest - the bottom physically splintered out of it's joins, the rest of the wardrobe falling back to the carpet with an almighty 'Whoooommmph' which woke up every flatmate we ever had in the history of our lives. We stood there speechless.
The whole thing was a cruel joke, some utter bastard in an ironic industrial design firm somewhere, laughing his/her fucking head off, sold us an impossible dream: the structure physically unable to exist on this planet with physics the way it is. The joins do not, have never, and will never, support the weight of the materials, the entire thing some crazy proposal, like a kid with an umbrella on a carport roof.
We looked at the felled monster and both of us were struck with trepidation. This had somehow become a symbol for our relationship, moving in together, and all that would come of it. If the wardrobe didn't work, what chance did we have? We had to get this wardrobe together and make it work.
Night three: We came home with an electric drill. We came home with nails, brackets, screws, glue. We came home with a glue gun. We bracketed, screwed and power stapled the shit out of that wardrobe. We robustesized that shit. In the end it was more machine than wood. We looked at the abomination. It wasn't going to lean anywhere now motherfucker, not only that, due to the extra hundred or so kilos in reinforcements, it also wasn't going to be moved anywhere either, that fucking thing is staying put for good. When they knock the building down to make way for a sky road in 2075 they'll have to blast this unscathed box sticking out of the rubble with a galactic missile. Nervously, we enrolled the rest of our housemates and we heaved that barn onto its steeled feet, it weighed a ton. But there it stood, triumphantly vertically, unmoving, solid. We'd done it, we'd saved our relationship, we'd raised our barn, we faced a bright future.
My South East Londoner took my hand into both of his, he looked at me, and he said: "I love you so much. I couldn't love you any less."
Wow, the romance. I was sold, I'll keep my South East Londoner.
Post note:
Last Tuesday the main rung collapsed inside the wardrobe. To date we've left it that way and currently keep our clothes folded on a bookshelf.
The post note, ACTUAL LOL.
ReplyDeleteEven better than the verbal story. All those who have already heard the wardrobe story, read this!
DeleteSecond actual LOL.