Welcome to the first edition of Upsykle online magazine, which might become a podcast if I can get my mobile out of the back of the sofa.
Upsykle your sofa.
And straight into our first article about what to do with a sofa that someone has taken a long screwdriver to in order to find a nearly new phone that cost a bomb and has my life on it. Lifting the arm of the sofa so the mobile just slides out, or you could have a look, would work, you would think, but it doesn’t. The stuff on the bottom is not just gross, because whoever thinks to clean the bottom of the sofa, but is also made of something really hard. What is it? Leather? Wood? I have no idea, I would google it OBVS. but my mobile is down the back of the sofa, so go figure.
If you are upsykling your sofa it is best not to kick the bottom if you have lifted the sofa up a bit to look because A) it hurts and B) it leaves a mark on your trainers you can’t get off. What is the bottom of the sofa made of? It is browny black and has stuff you can scratch off with a nail if you put your hand under which is dead dead gross.
I have put the sofa down again and now I have lost the screwdriver. Dad will not be pleased. It was quite a big one with a yellow handle. I’m not putting my hand down the gap at the back of the cushions, there is all stuff like off take outs and stuff it is really greasy. Really. Worse than your hair after a week of not washing it. But I need my phone. I cannot get hold of Becca without it, or Jamie.
This crisis has escalated. My mobile is ringing. It could be Becca, could be Jamie. It could be that Elizabeth trolling me again. She looks like an actual troll. I dunno if that is why she is so gross. Now it has stopped. That could have been Mark asking me out. He might some day, you never know. I’ll have to get it. I need something to reach down the back and grab the phone.
The loss of this mobile is epic. If I had it I could google how to get bacon tongs out of the back of the sofa. I think what has happened, I think, is my mobile has slid right down and gone flat. That’s why nothing touches it. It’s lying flat. So, thinking about it, I need something a bit longer.
You would think a ruler would do it, wouldn’t you? It is thirty see M long which is quite long it went down really easy and slipped out of my fingers which were greasy with the take out grease and that. And now the bread knife has gone down there too it is getting quite dangerous to put your hand down. I am going to have to do that. I need a hand covering. There’s a sock on the airer in the kitchen.
If I hide the other sock, does Dad know how many socks he has got? Do adults count their socks? Is it a test, like an exam, like: You are now an adult, how much is in your bank account – even if you say it is empty for stuff which is not proper food but everyone eats – and how many socks have you got?
It was a mistake to put the fried egg turning thing down there. I couldn’t have been expected to know it was going to get stuck half in half out, I don’t think anyone could have predicted that. Especially since it has a silicone coating. Everything has a silicone coating, it is supposed to make things non stick.
Didn’t work with the milk pan.
Now there are two handles sticking up and really really really jammed.
I have lifted one end of the sofa a bit and now you can hear stuff sliding. You would hope it would slide past the milk pan or the bacon tongs and get stuck and just lift out but it doesn’t.
I have only got half an hour before he gets back from work. If I had my mobile I could get Becca to come and help me. We were going to do Upsykle on her mobile and mine and then save it all and podcast it together because she’s got uplighter lights at her house we could take upstairs to her room and point them at ourselves. I think it would be better in my room which has got paint on the walls and not fairy wallpaper. Her Mum refuses to fund redecoration, even though it would be a perfect podcast for Upsykle. I am sure I would be good at painting walls.
I could go round and fetch Becca but her mum gets home early and won’t let her leave until she has done her homework, so, if I walk round there and she can’t come, I’ll have wasted half an hour I could have used for getting the mobile out of the sofa. And the other stuff. I think I really need to get the breadknife out of the sofa. If it has gone down and turned round the point will be pointing up. Anyone who sits on it could be knifed. It’s bad enough getting knifed on the streets in bad places but getting knifed on your own sofa would be big yikes. Very big yikes.
I really need something very very long and either sticky on the end or with grabby bits.
I think the heirloom sugar tongs were real silver. I know they were a bit black but I think they were silver underneath.
I have to get the breadknife out. If Dad sits on it and it kills him I will go to prison and there will be no one to feed Harvey. He will die and then I will have killed my father and my hamster, I will be a double murderer and not a journalist bringing you instant news from round the planet at all. I will not get to report from Washington in an expensive coat or outside of Buckingham Palace with a flyaway hairstyle.
I think the thing that has gone down now is for sharpening the knives.
Three handles sticking out now. You can’t even just look at the sofa and think: How normal! That is very normal, that is.
You can’t even hide the handles with cushions because of the way they are sticking out. You can stuff the cushions between them but it looks worse. I was going to do FEATURES for Upsykle and they do look like features. Having three big handles sticking out of the back of the sofa with cushions jammed between them does not look average at all. They certainly don’t look normal.
Fifteen minutes. What if he is early? I need something long with a big bit at the end to scoop everything else out of the gap.
It is surprising how easily the end of a spade slides into the gap in the sofa when you consider how much other stuff is down there now. What is even more surprising is that you cannot wiggle it. I thought I would be able to wiggle it back and forward because of the handle which is really big. A big handle has leverage (science). You think?
It is also obvious that there is the knife sharpener handle, the egg turner handle, the milk pan handle and a spade handle sticking out of the sofa. It is not a look you can ignore. It is a pity I put the spade in the middle. I would have put it at the end but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I am usually savage and on top of everything but I just rammed the spade down thinking it would be low-key. It is not, it is major effort. It also will not budge. At all. I wonder if you can see all the things sticking out under the sofa because I did hear a bit of ripping but the sofa is getting too heavy for lifting.
Yeet! Yeet! All is well, my mobile hadn’t gone down the back after all. It must have dropped out of my pocket and then I kicked it into the corner under the coffee table. Yeet! Yeet!
I absolutely ate that!
I have my mobile, I am going to call Becca and that is Dad’s key in the door…
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