An even more enormous chair

(originally emailed 11 October 2007)

Obviously, my success at physically brining a chair into my grandmother's house emboldened the rest of my family. At least, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

My uncle has an interesting habit of listening to everything we say and assuming we either a) are hopelessly exaggerating, or b) don't really know what we're talking about. We can tell him about things until we're blue in the face, but he won't *really* believe us until he sees if for himself.

My mother, on the other hand, knows that I'm probably right, but hopes that if she waits long enough whatever it is that I've pointed out as a problem will go away by itself.

For some months now I've been trying to convince everyone that my grandmother would have a better time trying to get out of her chair if we bought her one of those motorised ones which would give her a boost. My mother, I think, was working on the idea that if we waited long enough we, ah, ahem, wouldn't need it any more. My uncle simply never thought she was having that much trouble getting up - after all, he hardly ever saw her actually get out of the chair (largely because she tries to avoid it as much as possible).

The other day, however, my uncle saw just how much trouble his mother was having these days and suddenly - bam! We're off to the furniture store to buy a motorised chair that very weekend.

And I mean, that very weekend. Friday night he makes up his mind, Saturday he and my mother go chair shopping and Sunday we buy a chair and bring it home.

It always fills me with great feelings of confidence that I can say things for months and nothing will happen, but should any other member of my family get the same idea it's accomplished within a couple of days. Ah, the feeling of empowerment...

Anyway, the true adventure of this particular chair wasn't the decision to buy it, but the attempt to get it into the house. Until I managed to successfully bring in my armchair, it was understood that our door situation was too awkward to allow for furniture to be brought in or taken out. Now, we were going to test the limits of just what could be brought through our doors. We just managed to get her old chair out, but this new chair...

Do you have any idea how big motorised arm-chairs are? I made a point of recommending the smallest one I could find (one which my mother didn't like, but that my uncle could appreciate, so we got it), and it was still neigh-on impossible.

First, we tried the front stairs, which involved trying to work our way around the chair lift that helps my grandmother get up and down the stairs. Then when we got to the top of the stairs, we realised we couldn't get it through the door on that angle, but we couldn't shift the angle where we were. So, we took it back down stairs to try to change the position, but when we got it back upstairs we realised we wouldn't get it in without taking a door off its runners. But then we discovered we couldn't do that (to think of all the times I've accidentally knocked that door of its runners, this time we couldn't do it on purpose).

So, we took the chair back downstairs (not a light-weight chair, I must point out), moved the cars, moved the dogs and carried the chair to the back of the house. Once again, after getting it up the stairs we discovered that a) it needed to be on a different angle, and b) we couldn't shift the angle at the top of the stairs. So, back down stairs we go to alter the angle of the chair and take it up again. On this angle, the chair is almost impossible to move, so every step has to be fought for.

Finally, after carrying the darn thing up and down the stairs at least four times, we managed to get it into the house and into position. Everyone needed to sit down for a while after that.

Some time later, as I was sitting on one of the old chairs, something twigged. There was something about the two new chairs that was trying to get my attention, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was. After looking back and forth between them for a couple of minutes, I worked it out. They had the same pattern. Slightly different colour scheme, but the exact same pattern.

Somehow, we managed to buy two different chairs on separate occasions with no thought to what they looked like (other than 'they didn't look ugly'), and they matched.

Now we have three old chairs that match each other, two new chairs that match each other and a couch that's falling apart and doesn't match anything. After the trouble we had getting the armchair into the house, though, I think we're going to hold off on replacing the couch for a while.