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So my grand designs regarding furniture and moving things on evaporated.

Or friend from church who was homeless and had found himself an apartment, as things turned out, didn't want to actually live in that apartment.

He appreciated the wisdom of securing a bolthole for when it rains and freezes, and for storing his few belongings, but the confinement of being indoors did his head in. At least for the summertime, he needed the spaciousness of walking and drifting and sleeping outdoors. You can understand it, can't you?

So he didn't even want to think about the items of furniture and cookware we had made available for him. Food, he needs, from time to time — otherwise he simply stops eating — and someone to sit with him and allow him simply to be. But not furniture.

So I took the chair back up to my bedroom. Well, I say I took it — in fact I needed help from Tony. As armchairs go, it is small and light, but I got stuck with it at the bend of the stairs. I take this as a sign of growing old. Anyway, the return of the chair is appreciated.

It's good, isn't it? Even when things don't work out, they are not wasted.

The little chest of drawers I had taken downstairs ready to go makes handy extra storage and a place for the lamp to stand.

Ah — that cushion (in the middle of the sofa). It is — of course — not actually alive, but it has personality, don't you think?

The crockpot still awaits a new home. No one in the family has need of it. I shall gird up my loins for the task of posting it on the Hastings Give and Bakery, but for now it is in hibernation, in a state of dormancy interrupting its seasons of usefulness, on the floor outside the cupboard where the boiler (US, furnace) lives.

But look, not only did we fail to pass on that furniture and so reduce our in-house liabilities, but we actually augmented them by bringing something else home.

I have had to adjust the light right up so you can see its structure, because it is by nature deep and mysterious. It looks Chinese, in every possible way — it has that square, toad-like ambience of some Chinese aesthetics, it is as solid and secretive as Old Beijing. I mean this table (with the apples on).

( #should_have_been_a_furniture_salesman )   😉

The thing is, where we live people fly-tip whatever they don't want. Broken vacuum cleaners. Defunct mattresses. Old clothes. Cast-off children's toys. Car tyres. They put them out in the street and walk away. Someone else's problem.

That's how we got the blue and green blanket on the sofa further up the  page. Someone tossed it out into the road. I left it for a while in case they'd made a mistake and dropped it by accident (well, you never know). but eventually I brought it in from the rain and washed the mud out of it.

And this little table had been out in the street several days — we kept seeing it when we went for our evening walk. The weather was dry and hot, but then They forecast a thunderstorm, and I began to worry about it; because that table is, in its inscrutable, squat, Chinese way, rather beautiful. It is the kind of furniture you might have if your near relatives were dragons.

So Tony went back for the car, and brought it home. I cleaned it up. It stood in the passage. I showed photos of it to my family. They didn't want it. I considered offering it to Father Aleksandr —

— who is an avid collector with an eye for beauty. Frankly, he will take almost anything.

And then, seeing it adorned with apples like a harvest altar, I realised it was happy here. It wanted to be allowed to stay.

Not the only one.