Super-Maman To The Rescue!

My mother is amazing. She went to John Lewis and got them to agree to repay the cost of the assembly of the filing cabinet. I have no idea how. I asked her "were you armed?" and she said "yes" but I think she didn't hear me properly because of bad reception on her mobile phone. But we can't entirely rule out the use of weapons. The only thing I can say for sure is that I have seen my mother when she is angry, it doesn't happen often but by god it is terrifying.

Super-Maman 1, John Lewis 0. Next time England needs a new coach, I think we know who to call.

I Need A Hero. With A Screwdriver.

Have been Twittering about the filing cabinet of doom but this is deserving of a real blog post.

Perhaps it seems strange that I would want a filing cabinet. But I am self-employed and work from home and I have a lot of paperwork. Those Polish book contracts need to go somewhere. Also have been all excited reading a book called Getting Things Done - in life, I dearly aspire to be the type of girl who Gets Things Done - and one of the key instructions in Getting Things Done is that I need a decent filing system.

So I ordered a filing cabinet form John Lewis. Looks innocuous, doesn't it? Also, expensive. But there's a lot of metal in there - 32 kg of metal, and 32 kg of metal costs. And I am willing to invest that money in Getting Things Done, because if this were a Mastercard advert, Getting Things Done would be priceless.

This is not a Mastercard advert, and what is actually priceless is having 32kg and £259 worth of filing cabinet in 214 pieces on the floor of my study. I have self-assembled before. I am an Ikea veteran. But this is above and beyond. There are bits you have to glue. Glue, I tell you. And the pieces are all referred to by five-digit numbers, except those that have one or two letter codes. There are 15 pages of instructions. There are 27 diagrams each with an average of four sub-diagrams. There are ten different types of screw. That's a whole Kama Sutra of DIY right there.

Here is what the book Getting Things Done has to say on the subject of assembling flat-packed filing cabinets:

That's right. NOTHING.

Meanwhile, I am just a girl with a screwdriver. Not even a sonic screwdriver (wherefore art thou Doctor?) And I am manifestly not going to Get This Done.

I made a pitiful call to John Lewis. I believe that the words "I'm a single girl" may have passed my lips. I have no shame. (My mother pointed out that saying "I'm a single man" would not have helped my cause in quite the same way. First sign of DIY and my feminist credentials go flying out of the window.) I explained about the 15 pages of instructions and the 214 parts. I reminded them that this thing cost me £259 already. I swore that I was not inexperienced in flat-packing, but that I had never seen anything like this in my life. I think I finally broke them with the mention of glue. The nice woman on the phone is going to discuss it with her supervisor. I am hoping they will send me a man with a screwdriver. Second hope: they will allow me to return it despite torn packaging. Otherwise I am going to have a mountain of Not Got Done metal on the floor of my study until the end of time.