Hooker Problems, Volume 1.

The little bed that could.

Amongst the various topics I want to cover,
I thought I’d do a little series of blogs entitled ‘Hooker Problems’.

Sometimes absurd, occasionally genuine issues, always the cherry on top of the First World problems. Things to think about if you are going to get into this line of work, and to think about if you wonder what I do on my breaks.

I knew a few months back that there was a high chance I’d be giving up my work flat, so there wasn’t much point getting anything new.

My bed frame, however, had reached retirement age in bed-years, and it let me know, creaking and groaning in the way an older person with dodgy knees does each time they stand up.

I did what I could, but a new one was needed to finish up the final few months.

Getting a new bed frame delivered is not ideal but had to be done, like a tyre change in a pit stop, minimal downtime. Hoping & praying I wouldn’t be fully naked when the delivery turned up at any point in a 12 hour window.

When I got the new one, I went to town on it. Wood glue and silicone at the initial assembly, I was going to be bullet proof, so much so I was determined I wouldn’t be able to disassemble it upon leaving.

All was well for the first week, then The Creak began.

I rummaged in the cupboard and got out the box of brackets.

Existing ones tightened, new ones carefully placed.

The bed decided to learn to speak Dolphin, and squeaked a little harder.

More glue was added.

My new bed heard the nearby rail depot and decided ‘I can screech better than that’.

Leftover rope, a horse worth of glue, more silicone than a strip club. Things were tightened. A duvet was placed under the mattress. A brief respite, and then,

The bed decides to sing me its mourning song, replicating the sounds of the machinery which cut down the wood used to create it. Full-blown squealing if I so much as smoothed over a blanket.

The saga continued, by some strange fluke as I placed screws into the frame, multiple screw heads sheared off, leaving metal wedged into the frame and me unable to place another bracket in the same spot.

I opened yet another tube of silicone, only to find it had gone solid already.

The universe is trying to tell me something, but I just can’t hear it over the constant braying of the bed.

As I was deliberating whether to give up the flat or not, a friend asks to trial using it. I find myself going there on a week off, purely to wrangle the bed frame into submission, in the hopes of persuading her to share with me.
She was polite about it, but I know, deep down, it wasn’t the timings or the commute, it was the bed threatening to self-disassemble.

By this point, the siren song of the bed had me abandoning any shreds of rationality. I cracked open a container of grout and slapped it on like a mud mask. I was sliding tiny bits of cardboard and supergluing them in to whichever tiny crevices I could find. The Creaking MUST STOP.

My friend still hasn’t collected the old bed frame I offered him. It’s stacked up in the spare room, taunting me gently from the darkness. ‘Not so creaky now, am I? Go on, get me back out. Go on, waste half a day putting me back together and hope that I forgive you’

In the depths of my madness I’ve become one of Those People. I left a one star review on Amazon.

My go-to DIY Advice friend, Ronnie, is having an anxiety attack with every update.
I send him a 90 second video of the increasingly ineffective modifications I’ve made, with a Nature Documentary style voice over.

‘Not sure what this bit of rope is doing here, nor do I remember putting it there’.

‘What I’ve done, is wedge a wet wipe right up there.’

‘What about some cable ties, can I use those somewhere?’

’And this, this bit right here, is where I lost my shit & smeared grout on it’.

I tell Ronnie that I’m going to go buy ratchet straps. He snaps & offers to drop everything to come over to fix it. I decline and invite him to help me burn it at the start of September.

At four days left to go, I lashed the bed together.

The first day was beautiful. Seen and not heard.

On the second day there was a new squeak, a squeak that can only be the straps themselves.

On the 3 day, the old squeaks are back. The straps are squeaking. I’m so fed up that this has become my life, that I’m writing a blog about it instead of attempting to lasso the remaining two ratchets onto the beast.

As I walked back from the shop by the flat, noting they’d discontinued my favourite chocolate bar, I finally realised what the universe was trying to tell me. Give up. Get out. Niche flavoured KitKats should still be available on the hill I choose die on. And so I am preparing to leave.

There are two more planned days of work at that flat, before I set the bed ablaze. It will be its own funeral pyre.

I’m not yet sure who will win, me or the bed.
I write this from within an ottoman frame. It’s dark, quiet, and I am plotting my strategy.

KH