Well, my big birthday present actually materialized today, so I guess I have to finally draw this year’s festivities to a close–I managed to stretch it out pretty well, but didn’t quite make it to a week.
And what was that “big present” you may be asking–well, it’s the result of a collaboration between Dr. Wife and my best pal.
See, in the new house I’ve been working on a plan to fill various areas. Part of this plan has involved the acquisition of some very nice chairs. Not chairs that necessarily match each other, but chairs that eclectically coordinate, and that suit the particular feeling I want for this area–at least as far as my skewed tastes go.
The first of these I had actually acquired in Halifax. It’s a massive leather armchair. It looks like this:
On reflection I decided that while this is a wonderful chair it isn’t quite what I wanted for the particular area in question. The chair does function quite well in the armchair role in the “rec room” part of the basement, so we’ll use it for that. It will coordinate with the other chairs, but it’s just a bit too bulky for what I was thinking of.
After moving here we also acquired a second chair that will work. This one is also ridiculously big, but doesn’t have the same bulk–it has some… um… throne-like qualities:
The book is there for scale.
The new one is definitely destined for the “a couple of people sit and drink brandy or port near the fire” area. I will probably have to acquire another interesting chair for that area.
Anyway, this is all buildup–you see, in discussing just what kind of happily cheesy feel I wanted for this area with my wife, I uttered something like this: “you know, an overstuffed wingback with a very high back, a table with a decanter between the two chairs, maybe another table to hold the pipe–no wait, even better, one of those huge freestanding globes that you open and there’s a bar inside! Yeah, something like that.”
I honestly don’t think it ever occurred to me that those things were still being made somewhere. I certainly wasn’t expecting to get one for my birthday. But…
There you see my present, closed up, alongside the new throne.
And here you can see Pyjama Girl displaying the inside, where the old school loveliness on the inner surface can be seen:
And finally, here’s a shot into the thing, after I stuck in a decanter with some Woodford Reserve Masters Collection bourbon, and a couple of glasses. (Yes, at some point in the near future I’m going to have to get a heavy crystal decanter with that chunky cut crystal style–something like this, as well as a couple of slimmer ones.)
Trish set a pretty high bar for presents early on with Miles, but in my opinion she’s hit that mark again this time, if not surpassed it. (Although this time she does have to share the credit.)
