Station 4 - Buying chairs on a Sunday for a reasonable price

Station 4 - Buying chairs on a Sunday for a reasonable price

Not to bore you with the reasoning of the requiring of needing two chairs, but quite simply we have guests tonight, and we only have two chairs. 

So. I set out on an Indiana Jones scale quest to find two intact, reasonably priced chairs so our guests have something to sit on whilst they eat. Sounds simple doesn't it? In a town with about two dozen charity shops and four or five furniture stores this task shouldn't be difficult at all. 

As I walked around my wonderful hometown I came across my first possible vendor of chairs. A little charity shop. Alas! Outside were two chairs. Except one of them was broken. The fuck is the point in that? Ten pounds for the two of them. What do I do give one of my guests the intact one and give the other one to the one I don't like as much? That's not a chair! It's a damn manslaughter charge. I'm all for charity but not a charity that sells death traps. 

The quest continues...

As I continued to walk around I noticed how many charity shops were closed on a Sunday. Why? Surely the most charitable people out there are church goers who, conveniently for charity shops, are out and about for reasons I don't understand. Surely this is your market isn't it? "In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive."  (Acts 20:35 ) Damn churchgoers. I blame you that I don't have chairs. From now on I demand you be as charitable as your preaching suggests so charity shops are open so I can buy some damn chairs on a Sunday. 

The quest continues...

By now I beginning to wonder why a simple household furniture item was becoming increasingly hard to find. I eventually came across a rather large furniture shop. I had my earphones in so I had an excuse to ignore pissed off, lost tourists asking me how to get to the beach as if the North Sea isn't quite big enough to see with the naked eye. So in I went, about 10 feet in I heard a little "beep beep". Which annoyed me because I heard it above my music, it then dawned on me that I would soon be approached by the owner of this store wondering if he could help me. "Hello there Sir". Fuck you. Don't call me Sir. Do I look like a Sir? A hot, sweaty, flustered guy who badly needs a shave and ginger hair that still thinks it's in bed? In fact I feel like you are calling me Sir ironically and therefore I feel quite offended. "Can I help you?" Well. I'm in a furniture shop and I need some chairs. One would think I can go about this task with relative ease wouldn't you say? I thought I better let him do something so I asked him for some chairs. "Oh, we don't seem to have any chairs at the moment". Right. You don't have any chairs. In this massive furniture shop, you don't have any chairs that I can buy on their own. Oh no, I have to buy the table as well. I don't want the fucking table. Fair enough if I buy a chair it wouldn't be a set, but you would think they would have some chairs to buy on their own. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I am deluded thinking I could buy chairs from a furniture shop. So after apologising to me for this unforgivable lack of chairs, he said to me "Come again". Hang on a second there. Come again? You want me to come again to this shop that fails on its purpose? If I wake up one morning and think "Hmm, I feel like being let down, disappointed and unbelievably confused" then yeah I definitely will COME AGAIN. Until then, fuck you and fuck your table and chairs sets. 

The quest continues...

My last hope. A large department store which I will not mention the name of because it's historical resonance in this town seems to be sacred for some utterly unknown reason and that stupid flag fluttering about on top of its completely unnecessary tower doesn't help. So in I went, the smell of mouldy carpets hit me, and I was eyed by this shop assistant in a way that made me think he was thinking "Better keep me eye on him". Sorry buddy, I don't feel like stealing a metric tonne of carpet today. Sorry to disappoint. Browse, browse, browse...a-ha! Perfect, two chairs that would look just lovely in my flat. So I asked a shop assistant how much they were. "These are probably £35 each". What the fuck? How the hell do you end up with such an inhumane price for what is probably the simplest piece of furniture in the home? My guests are just two normal friends of mine, they are not the King and fucking Queen of Sudan! Plus, what do you mean "probably", is this some kind of test? Is this the price is right or something? These aren't historical artefacts which are "probably" worth an amount. These are fucking CHAIRS! Your CHAIRS! How do you not know the exact price of something in YOUR department? Is that carpet over there "probably" a hundred quid? Never did like your store my friend, now I like it even less. 

So after leaving that antiquities shop, I gave up.  Fuck it. They can sit on the chairs we already have, and me and my beloved can both sit on our coffee table. That way I don't end up in A+E because one of us broke our necks as a chair broke underneath us, I don't end up with an unnecessary extortionately priced dining table taking about 70 percent of my living room, and I don't feel like I've been ripped off paying "probably" £70.