Róisín Ingle: I’ve been sofasplained and couchlighted but I love my new pink piece of furniture

Today, on International Women’s Day – yeah, I know, that was quick, sure every day is women’s day now, when is men’s day, wha’? etc – I’d like to pay homage to sofas. I don’t think sofas get enough credit for enhancing the lives of women.

I am stretched out on one right now, glass of white wine on the floor, laptop on a cushion. I am wearing the voluminous cardigan my friend knitted for me with her largest needles and chunkiest wool before sending it in the post, reverentially boxed and wrapped in tissue paper. The cardigan is a very similar pink to the sofa and equally as soft. The sofa and I are as one. It’s empowering, this sofa. Emancipating, even. (Again, I know. Was it for this, etc?)

An armchair that forces its occupier to sit upright like a Bond villain, rather than curled up like a cat, is a waste of space

Everyone else in the house is upstairs sleeping as I contemplate the journey we as a family have been on with this sofa. It was inspired by something I read in Sali Hughes’ excellent book Everything Is Washable. The book is full of lessons for life including Sali’s philosophy that every soft seat in your house should be a bed waiting to happen: “If a sofa can’t be lain on comfortably, then it’s no good to me. An armchair that forces its occupier to sit upright like a Bond villain, rather than curled up like a cat, is a waste of space.”

After much research we bought the sofa, vast and velvet and beautifully bed-like, on the never never. I don’t take that for granted for a second. Back in the day, women in Ireland and in the UK and in many other countries needed signed permission from their husbands to get a TV or a washing machine or a sofa on hire purchase. I got mine without any permission unless you count me asking my partner if he minded very much that the one I really, really wanted came in an almost violently, unapologetic shade of pink. He didn’t mind. It was to be a family milestone, this sofa purchase. After years of squeezing on to a not-fit-for-purpose couch, this was the first one that was going to fit all of us, two middle-aged people trying to watch The Sopranos years after everyone else not to mention two teenagers addicted to Modern Family and Glee.

Friends, bad singing and Love Actually: Miriam O’Callaghan, James Kavanagh, Marian Keyes and more on their Christmas traditions

---

Róisín Ingle: I’ve always been a sucker for a dark or sad song set around Christmas

---

Which of the three Pauls nominated for the Booker prize will win? There’s only one Paul for me

---

Róisín Ingle: When red storm warnings rage it’s worth remembering the words of Joan Baez

---

There was even a special part of the sofa where my boyfriend could stretch out completely prone and shout at the television when Liverpool Football Club were playing. Truly the sofa of dreams.

In the brightly lit furniture emporium, back in early November, the lovely furniture saleswoman, let’s call her Sofie, assured us our chosen sofa would arrive before Christmas. She seemed very certain although we had our doubts. Sure enough a few days before the 25th of December Sofie made good on her sofa promise and the massive pink recliner arrived into the house.

It didn’t stay very long. Two delivery men carried it into our kitchen in a huge cardboard box, then hummed and hawed as they tried to manoeuvre it through the door and into the room I had decided was going to be, from now on, called the Den, like we lived in some kind of American sitcom. A room filled with a giant TV and a giant sofa and not much else.

“It won’t fit,” one man said. “You’ll never get it in,” said the other man. “Should have measured it properly,” the first man suggested.

What about, I wondered innocently, if you took it apart? “Ah no, you can’t take it apart,” one of them said. “Take it apart? It doesn’t come apart, not this model.” I’d never been sofasplained before so I didn’t see the signs. “Ah, well,” I said. “Happy Christmas anyway, lads, thanks for trying.”

In the new year, I consulted Sofie by email. Took a call from the Big Furniture Powers That Be in the UK. “We ‘av to attempt delivery again, I’m afraid,” the young man told me. “This time the delivery men will take the arms off.”

“Oh, do the arms come off?” I asked.

“Yes, the arms come off,” the young man said.

The following week two different delivery men arrived with the enormous cardboard box full of sofa. The sofa wouldn’t fit. “Maybe, if you took the arms off,” I said. “Nah, the arms don’t come off”. “But...” I said, explaining what the Furniture Powers That Be in the UK had told me. “Sorry,” they said, like I’d lost my mind. Bear in mind I’d never been couchlighted before, either.

Unusually, for me, I remained extremely Zen during this time. There were far worse things happening in the world, I reasoned. But even Sofie in our by now weekly chats remarked on how well I was taking all of this. “You’re very calm,” she said. “Most people would not be this calm. Believe me, I have seen it all.” I asked could we choose another sofa but she said that unfortunately delivery had to be attempted again for a third time.

The daffodils had bloomed by the time the sofa arrived for the third and final time. It took the two new delivery men five minutes to disassemble the sofa and put it into the Den.

It is far too big for the room. The door bangs on the arm when you enter. But oh, the pleasure I’ve had with this sofa in the past few weeks. Seeing the teenagers and their friends sprawled all over it with popcorn and milkshakes. Hearing soccer-related sounds emanating from the room knowing the soccer-watcher is enjoying the action in his favourite lying down position. The simple pleasure a woman can get at night, alone on a giant sofa wearing an oversized cardigan. A room of one’s own? Yes, fair enough, Virginia Woolf. But nothing beats a giant, pink sofa of one’s own especially one that is, deep down, a bed waiting to happen.