The Princess and the Pea

Earlier this year - I might have mentioned it already - I managed to put my foot through our wooden patio table while trimming the Wisteria that grows on the pergola above it, as the wood had become somewhat rotten.  I had to endure the ritual scolding from the other occupant of the house, who was rather upsettingly more concerned with the damage to the table than the health and safety risks, or potential distress and harm that could have come to her husband.  Assessment of the damage was somewhat distressing as it became clear that a repair was not an option (and the table was not in fact that old to be that rotten either), and it meant another expense just after we found that the chimney was leaking.  Therefore, we had to say goodbye to the lovely greenhouse that we had planned, and buy some lead flashing, pay for another roofer to go on holiday to the Bahamas, and purchase a new table set.

After realising that too many new wooden table sets are actually made of remarkably thin slats (even many of the more expensive ones), and look lovely when you buy them, but are not likely to have very long lives, we decided on a metal set.  This was principally because, having destroyed the eight year old wooden set (which should have lasted a lot longer, but Things Are Not Made As They Used To Be), we ended up temporarily using our other twenty year old aluminium set which may not look quite like new. but is still going very, very strong. 

And this is where a new issue for today's gardeners comes in.  Whether wood, metal, rattan, plastic, or even plastic made to look rattan, nearly all chairs and benches today come with lovely cushions.  But where on earth do you store them?  Garden sheds are all very well, but today's gardens do not exactly have space for massive structures, and they are always a bit damp, potentially leading to mouldy cushions and covers.  Temporarily, therefore, until we managed to clear some space, we put the cushions for our new set (the old one did not have any), together with a bench cushion, into the conservatory. 

And this is what we found soon after.  A cat that always acts like a princess at the best of times, has apparently been reading our fairy tales and decided to go the whole hog.  Has she, we wondered, yet felt the pea beneath the mattresses?