The Saga of the Yellow Chair

You have heard the story of The Yellow Brick Road, well this is the story of The Yellow Armchair. Oh, have you got a coffee, you'll need one, it's a long story.

You will recall at the end of last year we gave our bedroom a lick of paint but it has turned out to be a bit of a make over or as the french say a "relooker".  The new bedding is shades of brown so we decided it needed something to give it a lift. After much discussion we decided that a yellow chair was just the thing. However there is obviously not much demand for yellow chairs, surprise, surprise. Eventually, after three days on the internet, I located one in the UK. Unfortunately they do not deliver to France but suggested we try their German site. Despite the slight disadvantage that we do not speak German we established that they did not have any yellow chairs.

Not to be deterred, we enlisted the help of our UK shipping agents, better known as Pat and Mel. They have in the past sent us parcels using their pet, cheap logistics company "Parcel Pete". Unable to find the weight of the chair we made an estimated guess based on the size and weight of our office chair and were satisfied that Parcel Pete would solve our problem. So we ordered the chair for delivery to Pat and Mel.

We then received details of delivery from the carrier about the "30kg" parcel.  Alarm bells began to ring .... Parcel Pete does not deal with parcels over 25kg. Perhaps Pat and Mel have use for a yellow chair or ebay here we come. As always, John set about dealing with the problem. He found a site with a fleet of 29,000 little men with white vans who would give us a quote. Well, a number responded with quotes varying from £140 to £560!! In the event it was decided that we would wait until it was delivered and then review the situation. Mel duly reported that it had arrived and that the delivery man had held it above his head to bring it into the house.  Either a very strong man or it didn't weigh 30kg. Actually it weighed 13kg, so back to Parcel Pete.

Mel tried for days to track the parcel but it seemed to be stuck somewhere. I was convinced it was on the lorry which was on fire in the Channel Tunnel. However it arrived early this morning and was delivered by a charming girl who spoke perfect English ... because her family are English and she has  lived here 18 years!

We love it, but we appreciate there is no accounting for taste!!

A big thank you to our "agents" and we promise we will not put you through this again. No guarantees!!

PS. We hope that our clothes find it comfortable and that our cat doesn't!!