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First day of secondary school for Phoebe and she was picked up by a friend and they walked there without any grown-ups. What a delightful and horrifying moment. My heart swelled like a balloon that was somehow also brittle and cracked. How is it possible? I was driving her to reception yesterday. Literally. But they wouldn't let us in because the school wasn't open yet and Phoebe was clearly too old.
Ernie goes back to school tomorrow, so we did some last minute errands for him.
Two quite different retail experiences this morning. We went to Welwyn Village to rent a violin for Ernie, who has shown a bit of a propensity for the instrument and is going to have lessons this week. The idea that a violin shop can exist in a tiny Hertfordshire village is positively Dickensian and aptly that's exactly how the place looks.
A lovely woman at the counter took us through the rental procedure, whilst referring to Mr Hill who was somewhere upstairs, who now only mends violins and doesn't make them, btu who I pictured as 175 years old with long violin-mending fingers. The shopkeeper was keen to get Ernie the right instrument and coped with his seeming obsession (and impressive knowledge) of rosin and answered his questions about the pictures on the walls. We rented a beautiful instrument for just five pounds a month and left very satisfied customers who would be trusted to fill in the standing order for the monthly fee and were allowed to retrun or exchange the instrument whenever we wanted.
If you need a violin please go to
Hill and Company. Even if you don't need one, it's a brilliant experience and it's only a fiver a month, so get involved. Mr Hill is already by far the oldest person who has ever lived and he can't go on forever.
Then we went to John Lewis to look at buying a couple of single mattresses for the kids' beds as the ones we have are pretty ropey. We were surprised at how expensive mattresses are now, though it's probably nearly 20 years since we've bought a decent one. Ernie lay on a few beds and selected a mattress that was about £1000 more than I had hoped to pay. We found another one that would do for the other bed. We were pretty close to closing the deal. The mattresses were definitely superior to the very cheap ones that had come with the beds.
An assistant came over to see if we needed any help and we said we were just looking. Catie mentioned how surprised we were by the cost and he told us that you had to think of the fact that you spent a third of your life in bed and if you considered the monthly cost then it would be quite economical.
I considered telling him that it would take a lot of months before it was economical as a violin, even though that must be harder to make. I thought that might confuse him.
It was a good point and he should have walked away. Even without that context he was right on the cusp of a sale. He then started telling us how a mattress purchase should never be rushed and how important it was to get the right one for you and your bed, suggesting trying them out three or four times before finally making a decision. He also pointed out that we needed to check the base of our bed to see what time of slats were used and to make sure they weren't damaged and that was what was causing the issues. The type of slat would affect the firmness of the mattress. It was all good information, but it was coming at us thick and fast and also turning what we had hoped would be a quick transaction into something that might take us a month.
We were now in a position where we couldn't buy the mattresses until we'd checked the beds. I said to Catie that we could always do that and then buy them on the internet, by which I meant the store's website. The assistant was vehement that you should never buy a mattress online, not understanding what I was saying and not leaving me a gap to explain that I meant I'd be buying a mattress from his store. It wasn't like the one I bought in the shop would be any different than the one I bought online. Neither of them would be the exact one we'd tested. It was just a matter of him requesting it on his computer or me doing it on mine.
We were now quite bored and dispirited. He kept saying that he was going on a lot and remember we had told him we were only looking and not really asked a question, but he kept going on. Until there was no way we'd be buying mattresses today and in all likelihood probably not from this shop.
He meant well and knew an awful lot, but it felt like he loved mattresses so much that he was more concerned that each one went to the right person, rather than that he would actually get the sale and that he would prefer it if all the mattresses stayed with him in his mattress shop.
I am not sure I want to buy a mattress from a man who is that into mattresses. Who knows what secrets and secretions they might contain?
