Big Sofas, Small Change

4.30 on Sunday. A bit late to go window-shopping for sofas, but it suited me.
I went to this place I had meant to visit since I spotted one of their sofas in a posh magazine in the doctor’s waiting room. The surrounding area wasn’t inviting at all. Newly demolished building at the corner, a couple of warehouses and a yard to let, a slightly rundown side street between the Tenters and Black Pits (wool workers and communal graves for plague victims don’t sound nice on postal addresses). I was delighted to find the sofa-place was accompanied by other 2 furniture shops. At long last I had found it! The Mecca for sofaly challanged people! I entered. There were couches everywhere, the odd armchair and a young woman from whom I enquired whether they were still open. She rushed upstairs. As it turned out she also switched on the soft lights and mellow sofa music. Having looked around for a short while, I tried one (uncomfortable) couch. It’s useless wandering around a sea of settees when there is a shop assistant and no other living creature in the shop, I thought. I descended to the ground floor, gave my best smiley hallo. The assistant jumped up like a vixen with big blue eyes out of her computerised den in the corner.
The nice black overcoat my mammy bought me didn’t hide my real financial condition: more I-wish-I-could-buy than I-am-going-to-buy. The vixen instinctively knew. No point me smiling at her and trying to elicit information about their less puffy range, the size and prices. She spoke at me condescendingly thinking ‘no commission out of this one’, as stiff and uncomfortable as her sofas.
Feeling despondent, I quickly checked the place next-door, as deserted and friendly as the one I was coming out of, but nicer furniture. Panther was supposed to meet me in Lidel for a shop. So up I went to the proletarian Thomas Street and the value supermarket. As usual I had no change to put in the trolley. No security man to let me in from the exit to go and annoy somebody at the till, no husband in sight to extort money from. A young couple (inner-city accents, tracksuit bottoms and a baby on the way) were just leaving and I casually asked did they have change of 2 euro. They told me I only needed 20cent, put it in the trolley for me and refused to take any of my coppers. Reconciled with humanity, I pushed my little trolley through the East-Euro-Afro clientele, the vixen and her empty sofas only a hollow memory.

Pinzimonio