Bed end

I dismantle Squirrel's old bed and give it to the Aged. I am sure they appreciate it.

Squirrel, on the other hand, does not.

I don't know how any other parent manoeuvres themselves in this delicate job of replacing and exchanging kid stuff, but I do it terribly. There are tears all round, so the process obviously requires diplomacy of a sort which I cannot boast at all.

For example, I assumed that by dismantling Squirrel's old bed (shoved in spare room, not used for five years), dragging the dismembered bed parts to noisily clatter across a kitchen floor and prop them in the hall where we all fall over them, then wangling them through the front garden and into the boot of the car before driving off with the whole lot bouncing and crashing to a Help the Aged Furniture Warehouse, well, it sort of answers that question Are you going to put my bed back?

Er, no, Squirrel. Did you not see me take the corner in our 5-foot 11-inches car with your 6-foot bed frame squished against my left ear?

Now, since you've burst into tears of disappointed realisation that the words I am going to dismantle your bed really weren't my cunning metaphor for Would you like another hot chocolate? maybe I should go and retrieve it, huh? And bring its new occupant with it. Because I am sure your delightful bed will have a new owner before I get there. It is a lovely bed and you never trashed it. Okay, not too much, which is why it's sure to have a low price to convince some lucky bed-seeker that this bed is, indeed, the bed of their dreams.

It is not the stuff of my dreams. It is occupying good bookshelf space and creating an annoying nuisance and no-one has chosen to sleep in the bed or the room for five years. Aunty Dee even prefers the flooded cellar, the suicidal mice, and the Thomas the Tank Engine bedsheet.

So to this particular lump of non-desirable furniture breathing a sigh of death into the entire room, I can only clap my hands and say Good Riddance.

Squirrel is not in any way moved by this argument. But seriously I thought I had won her last weekend to my master plan to turn this pointlessly small room into a delightful bijou reading room and study. Suitable for - let's say - any child who happens to want a quiet place to concentrate on a few IGCSE geography exam papers which might fall off the printer. I remind her that only last week she agreed to choose the cushions.

Squirrel stomps off upstairs, yelling that it is her bed and no-one is ever going to have it, and she is never using that room ever ever EVER so there. I might turn it into my S&M room then, see if anyone minds that.

But this is the problem with Squirrel. Just when you think she agrees to something she brings you to confused bewilderment with a question like Can I put strawberry sprinkles on it? Then you are back to square one.

Well, she wins in a way, sort of, because when I get home from delivering the bed of misery to the fortunate Aged I discover, in my back jeans pocket, all the bolts to put the thing together.