OK guys. I have a question for you. Look at this picture and tell me “which one is your favourite penguin”?

Impossible isn’t it? They all look the same. I am sure on the inside they all have their own little personalities and their own unique hopes and dreams and outlook on life but from where I am looking they each look like a similar sized meal.

However imagine if you were made to chose one, and here’s the biggest problem, imagine if you were asked why you chose it? You’d go mad right?

But this is the world of anxiety that I am plunged into when traipsing around “Poufes R Us” trying to imagine how an arrangement of planks of hardwood are going to affect the quality of my life for the next 20 years.

I will take here the bookcase as an example. A bookcase is a collection of 4-6 horizontal planks of wood (supported by a couple of vertical planks) on which one puts books. I am completely blind to any other variation in this, whether it is the wood used or some fancy carving. I’m not going to look at the shelves, I’m only going to look at the books when it is full of books.

Obviously the main reason for furnishing a house is to impress others who come to visit but don’t live there. I think the best way to do this is by the books on the shelf rather than the case itself. I want people to look at my books and think “oohhh, Russell, Godel, Penrose – this guy is a bit of an intellectual”. I don’t want them looking at the wood.

Incidentally this is how I judged the suitability of homes that I viewed in the house hunting stage. By looking at their books you can gauge what “type” of person lives there and whether I could be compatible with that. I am not sure the wife understood my hasty exit from one property but on seeing Dan Brown, Game of Thrones and something about the girl who kicked the Badger’s arse on a bookshelf I panicked that there might be mercury in the water eating their brains and making me sterile.

So I play a dangerous game. Since there is nothing physically different between all these bookcases (and bedside tables, chests of drawers, welsh dressers and semi-welsh dressers) I use the only marker available which is the price. I know that the more expensive ones are more desirable for some reason and so I look at one that is on the pricey side and say “oooooh, I don’t mind this one”. The ideal answer to this is “Yes that’s nice darling but it is a bit expensive”. Then at least I have given the impression that I am trying.

Obviously the worst case scenario would be her saying “YES!!!! I love it, lets get it” and then forever be ruing the day when the cost of my book planks cost more than the books.

Did I really just do a whole blog post about a bookcase? Oh well. Next up is beds. You know, that thing you lie down on, look away from for about 10 minutes until you are unconscious. It’s important that it looks good.

RunningandStuff