The Motorbike and Comfortable Couch Ratio

Once upon a time, a family named Fixit moved into a house in Melbourne.

A kind friend asked them if they'd like a second-hand couch for their new house, because their Nan was going into a nursing home and didn't need hers anymore. So the Fixits were delighted and said Yes please. Unfortunately, nobody thought to check if Nan's Couch was comfortable first. Why would you, surely the whole point of a couch is that it is comfortable to sit on?

But whoever designed Nan's Couch was either very short, very stupid or a complete bastard. The couch had a monstrous hump right where a normal adult's neck would rest, which meant that when you sat on it, most of your body reclined on a backwards angle, except for your head and neck which were thrust forward by the stupid hump.

(Not such a huge issue for very short people)

The Fixit family, like many others, did not have huge disposable income so the problem of the uncomfortable couch was often discussed but never solved. They spent their evenings in the Grown-Ups' Room either perched on the lounge arms, lying vertically across it, or on the floor with their backs leaning up against it. Or just on the floor. Sometimes they (and their visitors) tried sitting on it the proper way but that never lasted long. However, the Fixits did reach an understanding that the desired ratio of comfortable couches to motorbikes owned by Mister Fixit would ideally be 1:1.

Time passed. The motorbike to comfortable couch ratio became 2:0.

Another year passed. The ratio blew out to 3:0...


...and Mister Fixit began to feel horribly guilty, but the time available to him to sort it out became negligible.

Finally after 5 years of sitting on Nan's Couch of Neck-Torture, Fixit managed to sell one bike.

More time passed.

But! a trip to IKEA was planned...

... and eventually the Fixit grown-ups found themselves in affordable furniture heaven. (Strangely though, in all his 40 years of life, Mister Fixit had never really absorbed the complete ramifications of the IKEA do-it-yourself philosophy and became more and more outraged at the lack of *service* therein. And Stompergirl, at first slightly worried that the motorbike money might go back in the wallet, was soothing towards his manly ire, but eventually couldn't stop herself from saying Dude that's the whole point of IKEA and why we can actually afford furniture from here and although the grumbling continued whilst he used his excellently good manly muscles to hoist sofas [and bookshelves and a chestofdrawers, they thought they'd go the whole hog] onto some trolleys, the transaction eventually went through)

The next day, the furniture was delivered, and Stompergirl put in a call to a churchy charity group who advertised that they took unwanted furniture away. She was a little bit unnerved by the what sort of condition is it in? questions from them, especially since her visiting nephew had got ink all over one of the seats, but she put that one at the back when the men rocked up, and the next thing she knew the World's Most Uncomfortable Couch was out of her life forever.


And on it's way to put someone else's neck into agonizing contortions but she really can't think about that now.