It was distressing to hear that people very close and dear to me were going to the blog and discovering not a word. Wondering, no doubt, whether we had just vanished into thin air. Well, I did re-start writing just before we came down to Nova Scotia in mid-May but I never finished or published. Just got on with the move. The Big Finish.
Is it worth your time? I hope so.
Warning: this is not the heroic period of the build. It has not the charm of the frog in the well. It is just two old people fiddling with the details of a posh little Scandinavian-style wooden house in Cape Breton...
So now, in the middle of summer, I start the blog again with an image of the bed we sleep on in this wonderful open house. Here's the story of the bed which is a Stearns and Foster model called 'Northampton'.
Is it just age (our sixties) which makes a good mattress so important? Is it the memory of overnight torture gathered from youthful crappy mattresses that incited me to visit the Dorval Hudson's Bay back in April. I came on a mattress salesman who is from Sri Lanka so we talked mainly about cricket. We got around to mattresses and I started falling onto his floor models, maybe 5 of them, until I came to a Stearns and Foster model called 'Northampton'. This was the mattress: this was too big a coincidence, this 'Northampton' and not a little superstition in this decision. I was coming home.
Circling round to where I come from.
A mattress named after the city of the Saints Rugby club where I actually scored a close-in try back in the 60s playing for Bedford was too much of a coincidence so I lay there thinking about the bruises I sustained that day and just fell asleep, lightly, but asleep.
'I'll take it,' I said, coming out of my reverie. Where's the salesman? So, right, I want 'Northampton' delivered in Nova Scotia. Sydney. Is that possible? Of course it is. For consumers everything is possible.
So now we are driving East towards a house and a bed called 'Northampton'. But how will I get it from Sydney to Cape George, 80 k? Shall I jog up there with my trailer and balance the bed across the 4 by 8 trailer bed? What happens if it gets damaged?
The solution to this problem is not something you would find in Montreal. Sister Janet suggests it. Call the kind deliverers who are bringing our fridge, and washer and dryer down from the Home Depot in Sydney to see if they like cash and bingo! for $100 they agree to pick up 'Northampton' and bring it along at the same time. Not a bead of sweat from my brow. Just a few of those new plastic washable $20 bills and the deliverers even set up the bed. I was worried they might be tempted to try it out and fall asleep like I did back in Dorval.
So here we are at Cape George on 'Northampton'. During the day we float out on images of the lake and at night we go to 'Northampton' for perfect sleep.
In these strange ways we tie knots.
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