Entry for November 20, 2006

I took my daughter and heir into Glasgow on Saturday on the curtain ring buying trip I mentioned a couple of days back.
That ends the saga of the living room curtain pole (I hope). I believe it is the most expensive curtain pole in the West of Scotland. A few Arabian sheiks and Hollywood movie stars may have slightly more extravagent curtain poles, but that's about it.
The whole thing began innocently enough. In John Lewis. I know what you're thinking. Not the place to go if you're looking for reasonably-priced ironmongery. And normally I would agree. But I had vouchers. Quite a lot of vouchers.
Not enough vouchers to cover the cost of a bay window pole obviously. Or the flexible bay window mounting rods. Or the curtain rings. Or the special passing rings. Or the finials. Or the brackets.
Or the hack saw I needed to cut the curtain pole.
Or indeed the second curtain pole I had to buy when I cut the first one too short. Not much too short you understand. Just exactly the correct amount of too-shortedness to make the whole job look shoddy and cheap. It takes skill to cut a curtain pole precisely that amount too short. Not everyone can do that.
So a second pole was required. Along with a B&Q workbench to make sure no mistakes were made second time around with the tricky cutting business.
Oh yes and the heavy-duty vice that I needed to pull the faulty pole (okay - the faultily cut pole) out of the curved mounting brackets. No sodding curtain pole was going to defeat me. Not if it meant buying everything in B&Q.
And finally the extra passing rings this Saturday.
It looks lovely though.