The Light Touch

I had to put together a new floor and reading lamp for my mother-in-law yesterday.

Now although pretty large, this was no bargain basement affair, coming from Rackham’s (sorry “House of Fraser”) at a price for which I would want the house re-wiring.

Now I pride myself on not being at all bad with self-assembly furniture. I know the instructions can be, er, “vague” sometimes but I thought with a high-end item like this that surely wouldn’t be the case.

How wrong can you be? The instructions were in plain English and they didn’t seem to have been translated by Babelfish from Korean. They were just rubbish. They didn’t explain things clearly, they missed out vital pieces of information and indeed actual steps and the item itself has various nuts, bolts and washers already attached in (the wrong) place, a fact not mentioned in the “instructions”.

Some 45 minutes later, Louise and I were fixing and then unfixing various burnished brass poles, trying to work out how to thread wires and generally "discussing" with one another about the best way to do something!

When we next need a light (which happily we won't, as mother-in-law gave us her old one!), we’ll get one more cheaply from Ikea!