Chairs for Plants

The alarm at 6am wakes me up. I’m thinking about the other discarded chair in our street? Sure, it is in a bad state, but all I really need is the metal frame, the rest can be discarded. The back could be hacksawed off and a flat wooden top could be attached to the metal frame, making it a stool. In fact, once I pull all the padding off, there could be a wooden seat underneath it already.

I set off down our street to get the other chair early, it is still darkish. Our next door neighbour is out the front with some tradies. I didn’t really want to be seen in my Steptoe moment, however, what can you do? Smile and try not to look guilty, not that there is anything to be guilty about.

Bruno is being difficult to walk, you know, like a bulldog, seemingly in a go slow, tra la la kind of mode. I drag him halfway down our street, wondering why I bought him at all. Of course, he is my cover. I’m not going to collect junk in the street, I’m just walking the dog. Stupid really.

7.57am. Sam calls me, just as I want to kill Bruno. “What are you doing?” Sam asks.

“Getting that chair?”

“Really, that terrible old chair?”

After that, Bruno just seems to decide to walk, maybe it was Sam’s voice, and he is fine after that. Who knows why?

I meet the girl with the Basenji, I forget its name. Damn! You don’t want to run into people when you are picking up junk in the street like a hoarder.

As I get to the chair, there are people at the café and people in the front yard of the next door house to the one that put the chair out the front. Bugger it! Don’t crumble now, just pick it up as confident as you like and carry it away, which is what I did. Would the bulldog decide to be uncooperative at my moment of get away? No, he isn’t, he cooperates.

I run into the chick with the basenji again on my way back up our street, but I just kept walking. Look straight ahead like a Galleon, Joyce Grenfell. (I just googled that quote, it looks like it is as stately as a galleon) Whatever. Look straight ahead and proceed forth, is my interpretation.

9am. We have ginger soup with sesame balls and that white sea weed stuff.

11am. Coffee. Sam has investigated why the TV cable isn’t working. The TV reception has been terrible these last weeks.

I have pulled the padded seat off the chair, and I have cut off the back. It just needs to dry now, since it was out in the rain for the last few days. Then I’ll sand and lacquer the wooden base of the seat and I’ll get some new leg end rubbers.

And when Bruno is all grown up, I can put it back out in the street.