The Mattress Saga

Italians are known for their expressiveness. And trust me it can't be any truer! The escapade I am about to narrate is a compilation of a week long short coffee stories...

A good Italian friend of mine was facing an issue... to get the bloody mattress out of her way from her apartment and get a brand new one.. She had already been to Primark and other bed shops in London.. However, nothing was up to her mark.. Finally, after a lot of research she figured out that the-sought-out-mattress could be, after all, available at IKEA Totteham! She figured out all the tube routes and sprung ahead with her boy friend to purchase THE mattress.

We met for a coffee the following day and she told me how disastrous the whole journey was! Apparently, she had to take a tube from Canary Wharf to Stratford.. change to national rail at Stratford and then take a bus (waiting time was close to 45 mins!) and then walked to the store. So overall about 2 hours. The good news was that she found THE mattress... Double mattress with foam top! And the actual shopping and billing took about 20 mins. Bravo!

At the billing counter, the lady suggested that they rather take a direct bus to cross harbor which had a stop at Canary Wharf! Yippie! So they took the bed rolls by hand as all they had to do was sit in the bus.. Little did they know about London traffic during peak hours on a week day! So it again took good 2 hours to reach canary wharf. Over all door to door of 5 hours with only 20 mins at IKEA!!

So now that they bought the brand new mattress, they need to get rid of the old one. Unlike India, you can't just throw things away. The apartment owner said they could either sell it off or dispose it off at a proper dump yard..

They thought of selling it online and registered themselves... however, you need to pay to get visibility on your product... She ended up paying 40 pounds to advertise her mattress.. too bad no one even looked at it.. you need to pay higher to be in that top 5 list and it was not worth it... after all it was a used mattress and people come, inspect first and might or might not buy at all! So option closed..

So the second option was to give it away to a charity... the charity folks came to their apartment happily and investigated thoroughly and rejected the offer (for free!)... when asked what the issue was.. they responded that it had a stain on one side.. ! (I had a suggestion here.. Please wash it off before any other charity takes interest in this!)

The third option was to just keep it outside the apartment.. but in London you won't see guards or watchmen much but the surveillance is just too good.. so there is noway they could go in a broad day light and leave their mattress abandoned downstairs as the land-lady would just pounce on them (with cameras everywhere ofcourse!).. so they tried doing it in the night.. stealthily with the lights switched off... the moment the normal lights went off UV Lights came into life in 2 mins.. so that was a total disaster as well!

In the end she could not stand it any more.. It was a like a ghost standing in the hallway (LOL!)... So they had to exercise the last option they were left with which was to find a dumping yard and dispose it off there.. they don't have a car here so it would be one hell of a story I am sure to take it all the way by public transport!

Overall, it was a simple problem which turned out to be a nightmare for her that we used to discuss it every day over a cup of coffee! Pretty amusing for me though... specially the way she used to express her annoyed efforts to get rid of a mattress... And definitely one of the lighter moments you can have with a totally non-English accent! :-)