Mrs.Twisted Goes Completely Bananas

Well that was a very strange and dramatic weekend.



The weather on Saturday was really nice.  Blue skies, fluffy clouds, warm sunshine and even a gentle warm Northerly wind.
My beloved and I had agreed to go shopping for some sort of furniture that we could use as a support for our big screen TV in the front room.  At the moment, the TV is sitting on an old Scottish pine dresser we brought with us from Scotland, but the dresser won't fit in with the other stuff in the big lounge at the front of the house.
I do not know why it won't fit in, maybe it's too snobbish, or maybe it has the wrong sort of accent. I do not ask these sort of questions.
If my beloved says it won't work, then I have to accept that. 
I'm a bloke. 

Blokes are barbarians (apparently)

That normally means that I'm a crude insensitive barbarian with no feelings or aptitude for the finer things in life like colour matching, or material selection for the new curtains that are certainly going to be needed in the near future, or anything really that doesn't include fixing things or painting things or even breaking things.
I'm a bloke. Says it all really.
However, back to the furniture hunt. 
We toddled along to Wellington in our new Subaru, and I must admit it, it's a very nice and sophisticated car to drive.  It's quiet and comfortable. I can actually speak to my beloved in a normal voice, I don't have to shout anymore to be heard over the throbbing rumble that filled the cabin of my old Bighorn.
We went through every furniture shop in Thorndon Quay. My beloved (and I, obviously) categorised the TV units on display as the following:

• Too tacky
• Too expensive
• Too common
• Too big
• Too modern

So after a light lunch at Le Marché Française (Akaroa Salmon quiche with Dill) we headed off into the Wellington CBD, but with the same results, although the "Too expensive" category headed the list.

It is our wedding anniversary on 1^st June, and because it is midweek, I suggested to my beloved that maybe we could go over the Rimutaka Hill to the Wairarapa for an Anniversary Lunch and a look at the junk antique shops in Greytown and the surrounding towns.

Mistake.

The Wairarapa from Rimutaka summit

The new car positively purred as it took the steep and twisting road over Rimutaka and then down into the Wairarapa and we reached Greytown at about noon.  The day was again pleasantly warm and we walked along Main Street holding hands. 
(Yes I know it's stickily romantic, but we still hold hands while walking along.  It's not a crime, and we like it, so there.)
The usual antiques junk in most of the shops.  One place seemed to specialise in Mexican furniture "hand crafted from a rare Mexican wormwood" and seeing as everything seemed to be fastened with rustic wrought iron bolts and had been "hand crafted" by a cross-eyed maladroit working with a blunted adze I expected some reasonable pricing. 
Nope. 
$3750 for a simple low dresser which we could use for the TV, if we didn't mind the TV sitting on one of the many bolt heads which protruded from the surface.

Have these people ever heard of glue and mortise joints?
Do they expect their "hand crafted" creations to be stressed with high "G" forces?

Have they ever heard of "bloody outrageous pricing"  Well obviously they had, and they were very good at it.

A boutique.  Still full of overpriced crap

More shops, more expensive junk antiques.  There was one shop, which didn't call itself an antique or even a junk shop. It rather pretentiously referred to itself as an "Interior/Exterior Design Boutique".  It was selling "ethnic hand crafted objets", and included a garden chair in the American New England style, but each piece of wood making up the structure was different.  Different colours, different weathering, different thicknesses and lengths, different type of woods.  It looked like it had been put together by a close relative of the "craftsman" who had created the Mexican masterpiece in the last shop, and I hopefully suggest that they stop marrying very close relatives.  Soon.
The asking price for this piece of  junk "environmentally sensitive sculptured and yet truly functional art" was over $5,000. 

Are these people completely mad?
Have they lost touch with reality?

Back to exploring the junk antique shops.  I was getting a bit fed up with all of the expensive crap on offer.  Until we went into a place called Chambers.
We had noticed it before, but I had thought it was some sort of Town Office.  Well it had been in times past, but now it was another junk antique shop.  Well actually it wasn't.  The sign said "Stylish and affordable pre-owned furniture"

The sign was correct in every detail.  The rooms were nicely laid out, not having everything crammed together as you normally see in these places, and it was ALL NICE. 
There was nothing extravagantly outrageous, everything had class, and it was reasonably priced.

My beloved went bananas.  She has always wanted to furnish our house with an eclectic mix of older pieces, and in the next half an hour she was well on the way.

We are now the proud owners of :
A "hand-crafted" Kauri wood writing desk/dresser from the early 1900s, made in NZ.  It actually is hand crafted.  I could see the hand sawn dovetail joints, and the slight differences in each of the drawers.  This would do nicely for the TV.
But wait.

My beloved was not finished.
We also have (now) a large red leather armchair of unusual size and proportions, with an especially good lumbar support.  My beloved was a bit unsure about this, until the shop's owner mentioned it had been owned by an ex-All Black. That did it, as my beloved is a rugby fanatic. Bought on the spot.

Then a long and very stylish (Italian) console table which could fold out to make a small dining table.
Bought.


Everything is being delivered tomorrow and we (my son and I) have spent all evening moving furniture around in preparation of the arrival.

I do hope my beloved has got most of this out of her system now. I don't think there's much room left.
I know there's bloody little money left.
I dread seeing the Visa bill this month.

But my beloved is happy, so I'm happy. 

It's the Law.

It's the Law.  Notice that the WOMAN holds the scales.

(And also a bloody big and sharp sword)