Shopping the Gumtree Way

On our way across London to see what we hoped would become our dining table and chairs, we got off at Gloucester Road to get a closer look at the art which we had previously only seen briefly from inside the carriage. It turned out to be a lovely, bewitching display of transformations--from urban to rural, narrow to rounded, nighttime to daytime. Lovely colours, transfixing faces, and a great way to liven up the platform.

We didn't stay there for long though, since we still had one station to go and only about ten minutes before we were supposed to meet the current owners of the table and chairs. Luckily, their flat was very close to the tube and as soon as we saw the set, we knew it had to be ours, especially for the extremely reasonable asking price of £25. How to get everything home though? We finally decided to try taking everything back on the tube and bus, with Bob carrying the tabletop and detached legs, and me with the four stacked chairs. The couple we bought the set from were very nice. The woman gave me some tips on a good market and assured me that the table was very clean and hadn't been used since Christmas Day when their kids came for dinner: "Since the kids left, it's just the two of us, you know (as the credits to Coronation Street sang from their living room), so we usually eat meals in front of the telly." The man dug out a wrench from a closet that seemed to be full of thirteen years' worth of living (the number of years they've been in their flat), took apart the table, and then dove back into depths of the closet to emerge with a bungee cord that he used to make sure that the extending leaves on either end didn't open during our journey. Over my protests, he even carried the chairs to the station for us. So nice!

Rather than switching trains with our awkward possessions, we decided to just take one train to Victoria Station and then ride our local bus all the way home--a much less exhausting prospect than switching tube lines with all those stairs! However, when I got on the bus, the driver shook his head and waved his finger in front of his face. "Whoa, whoa--where do you think you're going with that? You gotta take a taxi with that stuff; you can't bring those things on my bus." I couldn't read his tone at all. My heart dropped. But then I took a chance. I crouched down a bit, smiled, and said, "Oh, but this stuff is just little; you can't see it, right?" and he broke out into a huge smile and waved us past. Phew! So although the table and chairs fell over with a huge crash when the bus came to a rather sudden stop ("See, I told you!" the driver yelled way from the front of the bendy bus; "So sorry!" I sheepishly apologised from near the back) and we both had to stop several times walking from the bus stop to our flat, I'm pleased to report that it all ended well and that I typed this entry sitting in a real chair, with the computer on an actual flat surface! Ah, the small luxuries of life . . .