We purchased two very nice and enormously comfortable cream sofa’s from Sofa.com a few years ago.
I know, how you laugh, but we didn’t know about toddlers then.
Anyway, we had a small incident a few weeks back involving a misplaced glass and some red wine which resulted in some unwanted decoration of a sofa arm. Luckily Neil is the sort for forward thinking (and having had experience of me and my blunders), and had enrolled us into something quite marvellous called ‘Guardsman’ where they send someone out to clean, or in the scenario where a stain cannot be removed, replace the affected bit of sofa for you.
So yesterday I phoned what I believed to be ‘Guardsman Sofa Protection’. Sadly in my distracted state (The Peppa Pig episode had ended and was dealing with a fractious toddler) I had accidentally dialled the wrong number and ended up having a delightful, if somewhat confused chat with an elderly lady called Edna. Our call went something like this…
‘Hello’?
‘Hello, is this Guardsman Protection?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Guardsman, I have a stain on my sofa and was wondering if I could claim on our policy?’
‘Who is this?’
‘Amy Ferguson, I bought a sofa from Sofa.com 2 years ago and took out a policy with you….have I got the wrong number? I think I do, I do apologise, I shall let you get on.’
‘I am Edna Bridge. The stain on my sofa.’
‘Yes?’
‘I have put my cushion over it.’
‘Ok..’
‘You can’t get someone to clean it you say?’
‘I apologise, the stain is on *my* sofa…’
<At this point I realise how terribly English I am>
‘…But I can recommend the fabric and upholstery stain remover that you can get from Sainsbury’s. it comes in a blue bottle and you just squirt it on. It’s very good. That might help.’
‘Ok dear. Thank you for calling.’
<And she puts the phone down>.
Now that is what I love about older people, they can accept that totally random strangers may just call them in the middle of the day and dispense stain cleaning advice without any question about the normality of this.
I just hope her stain comes out.
But at least I can rest well tonight in the knowledge that if it doesn’t, at least she has a cushion to put over it…
Why didn’t I think of that?