Patience and puppetry

We took delivery of a small collection of flat-pack boxes on Thursday. Inside: the components to two bedside cabinets and a wardrobe. On Thursday I also bought a synth so I could produce music for a puppet show we'll be involved in. New toys often come with a steep learning curve, and while operating this one is not exactly rocket science when there are deadlines involved it makes getting it right first time a little more important. The obvious challenge here was how long Rowan could leave the boxes unopened while I was preoccupied in my make-shift home studio. We're talking minutes rather than hours.

Soon I was getting visits every five minutes or so to ask for my take on the rather vague assembly instructions. Then I was the 'muscle' to undo the things that had not been put in quite the right place. Finally, by Friday evening I was finishing the first of the bedside cabinets. Rowan's made a promising start to the second one this afternoon, and the wardrobe will have to wait until Tuesday because I'm out recording puppet voices for most of tomorrow.

IKEA seems to be the benchmark for flat-pack furniture these days. Our nearest IKEA is now a couple of countries away. What we bought is differs in that is both better and worst quality than the average IKEA product and it wasn't sitting on a giant shelf in a warehouse like store ready to be driven home that day. It arrived in a van a month after it was ordered - but then that was the agreed delivering time and delivery was free.