Open Writing

Readers of a certain age will doubtless remember the Monty
Python sketch. Young newly-weds rushed to a store, panting,
gleeful and just a little red faced.

They were greeted by Mr Verity.

“Can I help you” he asked.

“We’dlike to buy a bed please”.

A helpful assistant passing by explained that they mustn’t under any circumstances say “mattress” to Mr Verity or he’d put a bucket over his head. They had to say “dogkennel” instead.

The couple were bemused but played along. “And a dog kennel please” said theblushing bride.

“Dog Kennel?”Verity asked, “that’s Pets Department, Second Floor.''

“No, no” her husband replied conspiratorially. “We don’t really want a dog kennel. We want one of those” (pointing to a Comfydown Majorette).

“Mattress?” asked Verity, himself apparently puzzled. “If you wanted a mattress why didn’t you just say so. I mean, it’s a bit confusing for me if you want a mattress but ask instead for a dog kennel. Just say mattress.”

“But Mr Plumbrose warned that if we said mattress, you’d put a bucket over your head”.

CLUNK!

Verity had indeed put a bucket over his head.

Now the assembled staff had to get into a fish tank and sing.
“And did those feet, in ancient times, walk upon England’s pastures green......”

And so it went on.

The Python team made buying a bed look like child’s play compared to our experience in Knysna (the ever so popular tourist town in South Africa’s Southern Cape). Indeed it would have been preferable to climb naked into a bath full of sludge, than to expose ourselves again to the idiosyncratic and amateur behaviour of bed sales people.

Plug into one of Knysna’s many web-sites, for example www.visitknysna.com, and you could be forgiven for thinking
that the place has everything. And it has! Beautiful beaches,
wonderful walks, mountains, sea horses in the lagoon, street cafes and restaurants aplenty, a good brewery, dolphins and whales.

And let’s not forget the annual Oyster Festival (mainly for the cycling, canoeing and running fraternity) and the Lourie Festival for the Pink Fairies (not the 1970srock band which never quite made it).

So you’d think it might be possible to acquire a bed without too much fuss.

The estate agent who sold us our beautiful house in Belvidere is now a dear friend. We bought while we were still living in Malawi. On our first trip south, she kindly let us have (well, sold us) a couple of single beds which we put into our small cottage while we began the task of furnishing the main house. At least we had somewhere to sleep.

“Just call DialABed” Reny advised helpfullyin respect of our master bedroom requirements.

Their slogan is “Ring today, sleep tonight” or words to that effect.

So we enquired. The saleswoman on the line said “We don’t have that one in stock Sir. We’ll take a week to get it.”

It was just like the Bonzo Dog Dooda Band’s famous “Shirt”
song which began chirpily “Good Morning. I’d like to have this shirt cleaned express please.”

“Right deary” the lady replied, “That’ll be three weeks.”

”THREE WEEKS?” the man asks indignantly, “The sign outside says Thirty Minute Service!”.

“That’sjust the name of the shop deary” she replies. “We take three weeks to do a shirt, unless there’s an “r” in the name of the month, in which case we take four weeks.”

“FOUR WEEKS. BLIMEY!”

We still thought the idea of just ringing up for a bed of one’s choice was quite novel so we placed our order for a Merlot Orthopedic King Size. Whoopee!

The days passed and the delivery van (a scruffy old thing which coughed its way up the drive) duly arrived. When the driver got out with a fag hanging from his chops, his first words were (I swear this is true): “I think we’d
better take a look at the bases for this one. When I was loading it, Ithought they were different sizes”.

Indeed they were. “WELL WHY DIDN’T YOU QUESTION
THIS BEFORE YOU CAME ALL THE WAY FROM PORT ELIZABETH?.''

I got on the phone to the same woman I’d spoken to a week before. “Oh” she said without any apology. “We can send
replacement bases, but they aren’t new ones.”

Unsurprisingly I cancelled the order. But having already paid them by credit card, I lost £25 on movement in the exchange rate by the time they had re-credited me three weeks later.

It would soon be time for us to go back to Malawi. We sped into town, hoping we could organize the wretched bed before we got on the plane. We entered without confidence into a well-known if not very salubrious furniture store on Main Street. Miraculously, in the basement, there stood a Merlot King Size at an acceptable, if rather inflated price (this was Knysna after all).

Why hadn’t we done this weeks ago, we asked ourselves. How stupid to have even considered Dial Today, Sleep on the floor for the next month. The salesman whom we dealt with in the shop was extremely pleasant and well versed in the claimed qualities of our acquisition.

“Ah. That is a goodwan. I also am wanting wan of that wan.”

Fair enough. Feeling rather light headed with our success, we were then directed to the pay till. There, a large (and frankly terrifying) woman looked quizzically at my credit card. She stuck it onto the machine and started to plane it for an imprint. Back and forth, back and forth. But she wasn’t satisfied and hoisted her considerable weight onto the machine to ensure the card details were traced onto the paper below.

“This cad it is not weking” she advised.

For a further ten minutes she fiddled with the credit card machine – it seemed like an eternity – trying to get it to function. She even shook it and placed it at her ear, listening for something known only to her, but to no avail. I know that patience is a virtue but we had a plane to catch and alas, we had to give up.

Now as it happened, a month later, I met a man from Johannesburg. He was visiting my team in Lilongwe, updating our office furniture (an exercise which the UK Department for International Development undertake once a millennium).

“You don’t happen to supply beds, do you?” I asked tongue-in-cheek.

“Of course” he replied confidently.

He didn’t flinch an inch when I told him the destination was Knysna.

“One hundred percent,” he said. I

I thought that was what he wanted as commission but it was just a ready acknowledgment that the order was unproblematical.

Because I wasn’t going to be in Knysna at the time of delivery, I phoned Reny to ask if she wouldn’t mind opening up the house when the bed arrived. She’s a busy lady but said she would do so if the firm gave her a day’s notice.

A couple of weeks later her phone duly rang. “Hello. Is that Mr Wood’s maid? We’re at the house now. Where are you?”

Needless to say Reny was quietly furious but she dropped everything, drove the six kilometres to Belvidere and supervised the carrying of our bed upstairs. Now Reny’s not only busy but smart. And not only smart, but has all her visual faculties intact.

Under the plastic wrapping which covered the mattress – behold – a large dirty oil smudge about three feet in length.

“I think you’re going to have to take this mattress away” she explained patiently. “Mr Wood will not accept it like this.”

On the way downstairs, they knocked a picture off the wall and smashed the glass in the frame.

Three further months passed. Finally the firm rang me in Lilongwe. “We are back at your house and the maid isn’t here.”

“SHE ISN’T THE MAID!”

I trembled at the prospect of ringing Reny again but she was our only life line. Selflessly, she drove out to the leafy suburb and opened up our house. The bed was carted upstairs.

Realising the “fun” we’d been having these past several months, and that we were soon to return to Knysna, this time to take up permanent residence, Reny carefully inspected the merchandise.

Our friend could only cry out“Noooooo!” and slump to the floor, covering her face in disbelief.

The new mattress proudly displayed its prominent company trademark – it looked as if a rotovator had driven across it, tearing up the fabric, but only after traversing a muddy field. Adding insult to injury, the delivery man wouldn’t take it away.

“The boss says we’ve had enough of this client.’’

For the next two months I tried hard to get the firm to take the bed back. Meanwhile they were sending me invoices for TWO beds, one of which had already been returned, the other which we didn’t want.

And we thought Malawi was a backwater! Believe me, they could teach South Africa a thing or two about customer service.

If you’re ever visiting Belvidere and wonder who the buffoon is in the fish tank, singing “Jerusalem”, it’s me!