On Valentine’s day I ordered a new bed, Fräulein had been very patient with our sleeping arrangements, even I was forced to admit a sofa bed was not really practical when you are 180cm tall (5 foot 9″ in real money) which makes her several inches taller than little old me. Today our new bed arrived. Whoop Whoop!

I ordered the bed on the 14th February, then while I was at school with my sticky little children, I received a Whatsapp message from Fräulein asking me if I had ordered the140cm or the 160cm width bed as we had previously agreed. I quickly checked and I was forced to cancel the order and spend twenty anxious minutes during my break, trying to order the larger bed and matching mattress while hoping it would arrive on the following Monday. As I had promised Fräulein.

IKEA are amazing, they cancelled the order for the smaller bed and accepted my updated order. And just to be super nice, they refunded my money within 48 hours and the bed arrived early Monday morning, which gave me a full day to put it together. Fräulein was VERY keen to help build the bed, she kept saying useful things like “give me the allen key, I can tighten it better from here” and “you hold this, let me do it” I showed Fräulein the instruction book and it was patently obvious that this was man’s work, but as there wasn’t a second man present she could help by holding the bedframe while I did the technical stuff.

Fräulein is fantastic at a number of things that I would love to learn, take for example German, I would love to be able to learn another language (obviously after I have learnt Italian, as this is taking longer than I thought it would) or playing the guitar, she can actually multitask. Not only can she play the guitar she can sing at the same time. With a little help, ok a lot of help I can find C dur cord. I place my fingers on the guitar strings where I think they should go and she then twists and bends my fingers in strange ways so the guitar makes a sound. I have been searching on the internet for a song where I only need to learn C dur cord.

And as to learning German. I can now count to sex sechs (Six in real words) I can also say No. Yes, Hello and Thank you, I consider this to be a major breakthrough.

So who knows, maybe one day I will be able to sing Eleanor Rigby in German or order a cappuccino in Germany without the waitress killing herself laughing as one did during the Christmas break.