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| Creature comforts |
It can be a little dodgy writing about beds. Racy, even. But I'm going to do it. I don't mean to brag or anything, but our beds keep breaking. In the past two weeks we have acquired two beds and returned two beds.
It started, as so much in our lives does, in England. The nice sturdy double bed with the gracefully curved headboard that husband and I acquired at John Lewis after our elder son was born served us well for a few years. It held the three of us comfortably; he was a tiny mite. But he grew. Also the second baby came along, and things got snugger. Still manageable, though. With the arrival of the third child, we gave up. A double would not do.
Mind you, each child did have a bed of his or her own. Most nights they spent at least a few hours on their own there. But at some point, in darkness or creeping dawn, for many years, our offspring opted for a change of locale. They headed for the master bedroom and clambered under our duvet. Waking up in the morning, with my eyes still closed, I used to reach out both hands and count heads.
So we bought a bigger bed. A European Super-King it was called. Back then, in Durham, we had a massive bedroom and plenty of space, and it never occurred to us that in future the size of the bed might be a constraint. We loved that bed. Everyone fit, even the pets when they came along. There was a children's book we used to read to the kids called The Biggest Bed in the World by Lindsay Camp which could could almost have been modeled on ours (in the first few pages, anyway). While we hoped not to find ourselves floating out to sea one rainy night, as happens in the story, we felt confident that if such a thing did occur, this bed would see us through.
The bed survived moving from Durham to Brighton and from the first to the second house in Brighton. On the way to Canada, however, it hit a snag. The mattress made it over the Atlantic, and the pieces of the bed-frame arrived, but the hardware to hold them together did not. We learned that bed hardware is very location-specific. I visited specialist stores in every part of the city and across the internet. No luck. Always some reason. "These are metric measurements. Ours are imperial." But... this is Canada, right? Isn't metric the standard? Well, yes and no, it turns out. Or I would be told the exact piece, with a diameter of 3.14/8 inches, had been out of stock since Einstein died. For months after our arrival in Toronto we slept on a mattress on the floor with the pieces of the frame stacked in one corner. Finally, some new (and now good old) friends took pity on us; he is a master woodworker and maker of fine furniture. Bring me the bed, he said, shaking his head. I'll see what I can do. We dragged its poor battered carcass to Gabhan's eye-poppingly wondrous workshop (Gibson Greenwood) and submitted it to his tender mercies.
He examined the corners and crannies as a neurosurgeon might a brain scan; then he pored through catalogues and found, finally, in an Austrian collection, screws and bolts and nuts that very very nearly matched. "I can make it work," he declared, and he did. A week or two later, he brought it to us and supervised the final assembly. Hallelujah! We began sleeping above ground level.
The bed, alas, suffered again in our next move, from the university's rental accommodation to our current house 700 meters down the road. The movers bodged it and we made do, but eventually going to sleep every evening took on overtones of an extreme sport. The gaps between frame and headboard widened. The structure shook even when our tiny cat leaped onto it. The creaks and groans reverberated. The mattress wobbled. That first pandemic summer we were lucky enough to be able to rent from a friend her charming cottage on Red Horse Lake in eastern Ontario. The bed we occupied there was solid, sturdy, and stable, and the mattress so thick that actual climbing was required to attain it. I was stricken with bed envy.
When we returned home the deficiencies of our own bed taunted us. It groaned and complained and so did I. In addition to the depredations on the frame, the mattress had valiantly withstood almost two decades of occupancy including somersaults and bouncing and wrestling matches-- the kids' I hasten to add--and had shrunk into a pancake of its former self. I could hear it pleading for retirement.
So I started shopping for beds and mattresses. Online only, at that point, mid-pandemic. "Let's get the kind of mattress they have in fancy hotels," I suggested to husband, on the theory that if Mohammed could not go to the mountain, his mattress could come to us. It turns out you can buy that kind even if you are not a Hilton or a Fairmont or a Sofitel. Eventually pandemic restrictions lifted enough for us to be able to visit a shop and test out various possibilities, while masking of course (no handcuffs though). Slightly weird, but it worked.
Then we chose a frame. We finally settled on one that looked beautiful and solid and, while costing more than any other bed we had ever bought, would not break the bank. It came from what seemed like a slightly edgy, funky but solid Montreal-based furniture chain called Structube.
Such a mistake. I advise anyone reading my words never to engage with this company. The only exception is for people who enjoy hearing apologies, because that is what Structube staff do profusely, almost joyously. For your added pleasure, they do it in French accents. They have been well-coached in Apology 101.
When I ordered the bed they apologized because our choice was currently out of stock. Supply chain, pandemic, etc. I was gracious. Fine, I said; we could wait a while for this bed of our dreams. And wait we did, for many months. Seasons passed (though not the covid pandemic, sadly). Winter ended, spring arrived, summer approached, and so, finally, did the bed. With tremendous effort were the 300 pounds of sustainably-sourced acacia wood (heavier apparently than the environmentally-destructive sort) hoisted upstairs and assembled, at some cost, by a specialist recommended by Structube. While dismantling the knackered old bed, our hired hand asked me where my husband and I had been sleeping until now.
"Here," I said.
"That's not possible." He shook his head. "This frame is completely broken."
I blame the dog and the children. The cats assure me they had nothing to do with it.
At last we enjoyed the splendor of safe sleep in the environmentally-friendly, beautifully finished, solidly-constructed new bed. We reveled (not a euphemism) in our new acquisition. I even bought a lap-desk large enough for my computer and a cup-holder, thus making the bed into a new workspace.
Then one day, some months later, while smoothing the duvet and plumping the pillows, my fingers snagged on something. A crack. The solid-wood headboard had a long narrow crevice running through and through, from east to west. I contacted Structube and complained.
The young man on the other end apologized charmingly. "I am so sorry for your inconvenience. I will send you a form to complete." The other thing at which Structube excels is sending forms to complete.
They agreed to exchange the bed, but they refused to compensate us for the cost of hiring more help for disassembly, removal, and reconstruction of old and new beds. "I am very sorry for your experience. We do apologize," one young French-accented young man after another assured me. "Mais...non. It is not our policy. Tant pis pour vous."
The replacement bed was, unsurprisingly, not in stock. They were sorry. I received periodic emails reminding me how sorry they were. Eventually, the new bed reached Structube's warehouse and then finally our front door (no further). More hired helpers hoisted it up the stairs and unboxed it. Et...quoi? The new headboard was damaged!
I called Structube. They were, predictably, apologetic. Also predictably, a replacement bed would take some months to arrive. Again, they were sorry. Very, very sorry.
"I can't wait that long for a new bed," I told the nice man at the other end, breaking into his apology. At that point I probably could have complained about anything, not just furniture-related matters--perhaps the existence of mosquitos in the world, or Vladimir Putin--and received the same response. They would be very sorry for my experience.
No more, I told him. This time I'm sorry. Assez. We are done with Structube. Take back your bed. Give us our money. Stop apologizing.
He said he would send me a form.
Postscript:we have a bed! It's from Ikea. Recommended by our friends Pamela and John (their advice on putting it together: don't make mistakes). Generally I avoid Ikea like the plague but for our current purposes, it serves. As an added bonus constructing the thing provided a sweet father-son bonding experience. At least the quick snapshots I grabbed looked sweet. I high-tailed it out of there in order to make another bed, in the garden, for my new rosebushes.
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| So far so good, says the cat |
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| Spot the rosebushes |
