Here’s a little story from two nights ago. Jennie got home at eight with some easy stir fry, and a good plan to have a quick dinner before retrieving our bed and a few bits of furniture to put in our newly finished bedroom. All was going well, everything cleaned up and with little felt feet on to protect the floor, until we got to the main bit of the bed, with all the slats, which bolts in to the uprights.
We looked at each other and voiced the same thought: “Where on earth are those eight crucial screws?”
“We put them in a safe place.”
“I can remember, we definitely put them somewhere safe. Where was it?”
“I think it was a bit too safe.”
“Usually I screw them back into the bed frame… they’re definitely not there, right?”
“They can’t be here, there, or there, as I’ve had all that out recently and didn’t spot them, I’d remember seeing them in there…”
“Check anyway, you never know.”
“Where the fuck can they be.”
“Seriously, this has to be the stupidest thing we’ve ever done.”
“But we put them in a safe place, I know we did!”
“They can’t be in that tupperware buried in the deepest darkest corner of the box room, I had that box out today and went through it all, I’d have seen them”
15 minutes of box room excavation later
“Yep, that tupperware hasn’t been opened for years, it’s just old wall safety brackets for IKEA shelves we had before we had children to climb them.”
“We put them in a safe place, where’s safe in this flat?!”
“I’ll check the bed frame again.”
“They’ll be up high, we wouldn’t want Angus to find them.”
“Apparently we wouldn’t want ourselves to find them!”
“Maybe they’re in the board games.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“I have some bolts in that box, they might fit…”
“That box we just put away in the deepest darkest box room?”
“Yes, that box.”
10 minutes this time, definite improvement
“Success! They fit perfectly! And I’ve got nine of them – keeping hundreds of little bags of nuts, bolts, screws and nails: vindicated.”
5 minutes of putting the bed together later
“Hang on, the heads of these are really only a little bit bigger than the holes in the metal they’re securing, if they were to pull through that would be a bit of a disaster. I think the originals had washers. Good news – I have some washers…”
“I think I know what the bad news is…”
“Yeah, they’re back in that box we put away in the box room again”
“FFS”
Like a well oiled, slightly sleepy, machine, we get to the box in 5 minutes
“OK, so I have 4 washers which are the right size, and 4 which are a little on the small side, so here’s your half, let’s redo everything!”
“Grr”
Who knows when we’ll find those stupid bolts.