Sofa Boy

'Muito movimento' was the best way to describe life in our little studio today.  

Our new sofa was meant to be delivered at 11.00 and a man and van were to arrive at 10.30 to take away old sofa (being taken by Brazilian friends).   The man arrived but no van.  Then a call from the sofa shop to say the delivery van had broken down and there was a big doubt as to whether it would be delivered today or Saturday.  Should we let our current sofa go or not.....if the van actually arrived?   In the meantime, a plumber was here to inspect the little leak from our kitchen tap and then went off to Amoeda, 'the area of taps', to buy us a replacement fitting.  A call from the sofa company to confirm delivery would be today between 2 and 5pm.  Great!  The man without the van had already gone of course and so we decided it best just to have our current sofa taken out the studio and left downstairs for collection later.  We crossed everything that the delivery guys would be sufficiently laid-back and willing to take the sofa downstairs for us - it wouldn't happen in Barcelona with a formal delivery.    A call from the head porter then to say that the plumber had called and he couldn't find a replacement for our tap in the tap area.  Mmm.  Bb had seen what he thought would be a possible replacement in a local shop and so the plumber agreed to come back in 30' and go to the shop with Bb to inspect it.  All this was agreed by phone - was it clear what we wanted, we wondered, as, of course, this was all in Portuguese.   1.30pm and the buzzer went to announce the 'early' arrival of the sofa!  Great - they agreed quite happily to take ours out and downstairs.  They wanted to know if it came in the flat in one piece and we were pretty sure it had, but weren't 100% sure as it was 9 years ago and we were taking delivery of things left, right and centre then, as well as doing up the studio!   As I looked at our sofa it seemed to grow in front of my eyes.  They couldn't get it round the corner and out the door.  No problem, 'we'll just take the back off'.  They reversed into the flat again and of course they didn't have the right tool to get the back off.  I could hear Bb rustling around in the little tool bag we keep in the bathroom cupboard, then he appeared with two kitchen knives.  Luckily, after a first attempt with the wrong tool, they rummaged around in the depths of their van and found the right one.  Yes!!  New sofa was taken downstairs, back put pack on.  Back taken off our new one and all brought upstairs and they managed to get it all in ok with no damage to walls, doors or our nerves.  I missed this bit, but when I next looked at them, they had donned white surgical gloves as they were now handling the sofa with the fabric exposed.  Very professional and much needed of course, given the heat here and these guys were now hot and 'glowing', despite the aircon on full blast.  No sooner had they gone, happy with the tip for taking our sofa downstairs, than the plumber arrived and he and Bb set off on their shopping trip.  'Don't sit on the sofa till I come back', were Bb's parting words!  Talk about having an elephant in the room!  I promise I didn't sit on it Bb.  After quite hard negotiation on Bb's part - the plumber was impressed apparently - they came back with all the right parts to replace our tap.  An hour later, we had a new, fully functional kitchen tap and the nice plumber also tightened up a couple of things in the bathroom.   He left and....eventually.....we could admire our new sofa and sit on it!  We wondered if our old one was as firm as this when we had bought it - this sofa is exactly the same as the one now downstairs, but a different colour and fabric.  Hold on - how come this one sits a bit more in front of the plug points?  How come it's 7cms wider than the one in the shop despite our careful measuring?!  Anyway, we love it and it was declared 'very comfortably firm'.  Here's Bb trying it out for size - ignore the messy table on the right....we had to empty things from the kitchen cupboards for the plumber's work. 

After all the excitement of the day we were exhausted, but were going out to meet Gina, Priscilla and William in Baixo Copacabana Bar.  Gina is  our power of attorney here and she and Priscilla help us with all sorts of things here in Rio.  What we didn't know was that William would be singing and playing the guitar in the bar!  They're also taking the slightly-too-soft-for-our-liking-but-still-quite-a-lot-of-life in it sofa bed off our hands.  A great night and end to a satisfying day!  Bb has blipped us all in the bar.