The River: Sofas

(This is my first river post, just testing the waters with this one, ok?)

It seems to me that someone's sofa can tell you lot about that person. I know a family that are big, warm and expansive; they have sofas so hidden with multicoloured cusions and throws in a variety of 'ethnic' prints and fabrics that you cannot tell with colour they truly are. They also have one of those big bowl-like chairs that envelop you in padding when you get in and are very difficult to escape. Sofas in holiday homes and hotels all seem to be very similar to me - unmemorable, all right to look at but fairly uncomfortable, no love expended on them and nothing recieved in turn.

I know another family that have big, black, leather sofas. The people in this family are very pretty, and in fact can be very nice people, but you have to tread lightly. Danger lurks in pissing them off (which is far too easy to do) and uncomfortable silences prey upon the unwary. I have slept on these sofas and found them to be deceptive - comfortable when you first sit down but as the night wears on they become sticky and hard and bumpy and harder and harder to cope with. Similar things can be said of their owners. (NOT that I am implying that all leather-sofa owners are like this - these particular leather sofas are just the meanest (bitchiest?) I've come across.)

Sofa shoppers, be warned! Clearly there is danger lurking in Kingdom of Leather - how will people read your sofatic choices? Will you be judged on the colour of your throw?

In fact, my curent level of neurosis does somewhat induce me to worry about such things - we have three sofas (soon to be two as the new house is very, very much smaller than this one). Do people observe the large hole in the covers of the big blue one and wonder how we can live with such damage? Do they wonder what further fissures lurk beneath the rather manky blanket covering one of the cusions of the pink one and think us deceptive? Do they tut at the superfluous nature of the the third sofa, hanging with the seatle at the unused end of the lounge and consider us wasteful? Do we have too many cusions, or too few? Is the coffee table too big? Is there just a little too much Rodin?

Ok, so maybe our sofas are not my biggest issue. Especially as I am not even a proper adult of this house (legally doesn't reall count in families), thus I don't really feel that the sofas are a direct reflection upon myself - which is lucky because I seem to think a lot of other things are. Maybe I'm right that my clothing and hair styles do affect what other people think of me, but I do wish that I would stop obsessing over it as though it determined what I am like instead of just advertising it.

Still, I think I am right when it comes to sofas - the more I think about it, the more sofas seem to suggest qualities about their owners. Grandoise settees in one house are kept immaculate while the rest of the (giant) house falls into bohemian ruin. My grandparent's sofa is a practical sofabed that reminds one that their current house is much larger than the four rooms (not bedrooms, actual rooms) they shared with their five children forty/twenty years ago. Sofas are important because of their place in the life of any family - gathering place and resting place. Maybe I'm being a little too romantic here (tis a nasty habit). And I'm not sure why I'm writing about furniture - but I supose four hours in Ikea will do that to you. :D