And so, while you’re looking the other way, another 19 years slip by, and before you know it
that new lounge suite is starting to look embarrassingly shabby. That’s more or less the point
we reached a few months ago, and so we started exploring possible replacements.
A few days stumbling around online led us to the conclusion that anything that we were
likely to find as comfortable as what we were replacing was going to cost us more than we
really wanted to spend. Enter Plan B.
While it’s true that our old suite (a three-seater plus two-seater) is getting a little misshapen
around the arms and the headrests, since it is a bulgy style of furniture anyway, this is not
something we couldn’t contemplate living with. The real problem is that the fabric has
become stained, both from the occasional spillage of coffee (or, in Bernice’s case, tea) and
from the long-term effects of perspiration (or, in Bernice’s case, glow).
So, we started to explore recovering the suite. Another round of research soon led us to the
conclusion that a proper recovering job would set us back not sufficiently significantly short
of buying a new suite. Although the recliner mechanism is fine on all four reclining seats, the
extent to which the stuffing has been knocked out of the sofas means that we didn’t feel
paying a hefty sum to recover it made sense. Time for Plan C.
A further internet research revealed loose, one-size fits all, fabric covers, that (online, at least)
tie effortlessly underneath the sofa, are held tightly in place (online, at least) by long, thin,
foam sausages that tuck down between the seat and the back and seat and sides, and come
with glowing recommendations from hundreds of satisfied customers. For an outlay of only a
couple of hundred shekels, we could effectively renovate our suite.
Except, of course, the material is rather less durable than we had hoped, securing the covers
to recliner seats proved more of a logistics challenge than foreseen, and the foam sausages,
no matter how firmly tucked down, soon spring up again, startling unsuspecting guests and
driving us mad. After a couple of months of living with the idiosyncrasy of this papering over
the cracks, we faced the fact that we really had to bite the bullet and buy a new suite.
An initial, and fairly thorough, internet trawl revealed that, in the sweet spot of reclining
sofas that do not require remortgaging the house, Dr Gav has little, if any, competition.
Blogger’s Note: If you have had a bad experience with Dr Gav furniture, please don’t feel
obliged to share your story with me. We have already gone ahead and ordered, so I’d rather
not know what’s liable to be waiting for us a depressingly short distance down the road.
As luck would have it, we reached this point exactly on Black Friday. For the benefit of my
readers outside Israel, I need to explain that this is less of a statistical improbability than you
might think, because, in Israel, Black Friday lasts for the entire month of November.
Sometimes, it is called Black November, but sometimes it is still called Black Friday (and
sometimes even Bleck Friday, but that’s another story), even though it lasts 30 days.
Having found Dr Gav’s website, Bernice and I saw that there was even a choice of suites, at
more or less the same price as we paid 19 years ago, when we certainly couldn’t afford it. So,
last week, we set off for Talpiot in South Jerusalem, to see what we would make of the suites
in the flesh. Having done our homework, we were able to announce to the saleswoman that
we wanted a 3+2 with a manual reclining mechanism, and, in addition, a reclining TV chair.
(In our back room, which we call the snug, where our 32-inch screen lives, we have an
electric reclining sofa, and it feels decadently luxurious, but for the salon we need a seating
arrangement that we can recline in on Shabbat, so it has to be manual.)

The only unresolved question was: leather or fabric. After viewing, and sitting on, all that Dr
Gav had to offer, we quickly made up our minds. We really felt we couldn’t justify spending
another 35% for leather. As it happens, the TV chair was not in exactly the same style, and
not available in the same shade of grey, as the sofas. Bernice thinks this variation is very
sophisticated, and, by this stage of our shared life, I know the areas in which she outpunches
me, so I immediately bowed to her refined taste.
The best news of all was that, as luck would have it, the day we walked into the shop was the
last day of Black Friday, and the 3+2 were, for that one day only, available at a 33%
discount, and the chair at a 6% discount. This was a little confusing, since the day was
actually December 1, which seems an odd day to end Black November. However, we didn’t
argue. (I have, subsequently, revisited the website, where I see that the furniture is now being
offered at full price, so it appears we were indeed lucky to get in just in time.)
Feeling very pleased with ourselves, we sat down at the showroom desk to finalise the
purchase. (The nice thing about buying furniture, incidentally, is that you get to sit in a really
comfortable chair when you finalise the purchase.) We confirmed the choice of fabric from
the swatch book (Note to self: research the etymology of ‘swatch’ – such a wonderful-
sounding word), and had the price confirmed…and then the fun started.
First, the saleswoman added the delivery charge. I’m pleased to say that there was no extra
charge for delivering over what a few people who didn’t get the memo still call the green
line. (A surcharge for delivery to ‘the territories’ used to be standard, but seems to have more
or less died out.) Then, when she confirmed that the delivery team would undoubtedly be
ready to take our old suite to the municipal bins at the end of the street, for a modest
remuneration, I made a mental note to add another 100 shekels to the bill.
As Bernice and I rode the (free for seniors) bus home, we agreed that we could tie the three
pieces together, thereby counter-balancing the different shade of grey and slightly different
design of the TV chair, by buying another cushion at IKEA to match the two we already have
on our current sofas. This, of course, is predicated on the assumption that IKEA still stock
that cushion design. I am sure we will find they don’t, and will have to buy two new cushion
covers, in addition to the one new cushion.
While we are at IKEA, we will also probably be looking for six placemats in a distinctive
contrasting colour, to use as anti-macassars. We would buy anti-macassars, if we could only
find them in the shops, but they seem, strangely, to have gone out of fashion in the last 120
years.
As you can see, our list of hidden extra costs is mounting up. However, at least everything I
have mentioned so far is in the realm of the expected. Once we returned home, Bernice came
up with one that I wasn’t expecting. She pointed out that probably the shabbiest part of our
current sofas is the footrests, which are discoloured and rubbed and dirty. “We’re going to
have to start taking our shoes off when we come in, and changing into slippers,” she informed
me. I couldn’t argue with the logic, even though I am not a fan of changing into slippers.
Once I have invested in the, at my age not inconsiderable, effort of getting a pair of shoes on
in the morning, I like to extract the maximum from that effort, and to keep them on until I go
to bed.
However, as I said, I couldn’t fault Bernice’s reasoning. The only problem is that my one
decent pair of slippers live in Portugal, where I need them for the winter, especially when my
shoes are soaking wet, and the only pair I have in Israel are a ridiculously wide pair of
backless slippers, bought on impulse several years ago. In order to keep them on, I have to

avoid lifting my feet off the floor, with the result that they make me look and sound a good
fifteen years older than I am.
So, a couple of days later, off I went to our local mall, to buy slippers. All the cheap ones
were backless and therefore no use at all, but I eventually found a pair of Kippy slippers that I
will be perfectly happy with. (Again for the benefit of non-Israeli readers, Kippy was a
hedgehog character in Israel children TV’s version of Sesame Street, who wore slippers that
zipped up the centre, which have, subsequently, always been known, and loved, or mocked,
in Israel as Kippy slippers. To see what I mean, or to relive your children’s childhood, take a
look here.) Slippers! Yet another hidden extra!
But that’s not all. If, as we are told, time is money, then there is one more hidden extra I need
to tell you about. As we left for our last trip to Portugal, we had time to kill at the airport, and
somehow talked ourselves into buying a bottom-of-the-range robot cleaner (which,
incidentally, we are happy with, so far). I hadn’t realised, when we bought it, the investment
of time in setting up that this would involve, but I soon learnt that I needed to let the robot
map each floor of the house. I then needed to divide each map into its separate rooms, in
order to be able to give specific cleaning instructions. Naturally, the robot maps such
impassable barriers as sofas, thereby learning that it must pass around them. A couple of days
ago, I realised that, after our new furniture is delivered, and we have decided on final
placement, I will have to redraw the downstairs map, to accommodate the new suite.
Next time someone says: “We really ought to think about replacing the…”, I’m going to
insist we carry out a brainstorming exercise to properly understand just what ‘replacing
the…’ is going to involve, hidden extras and all. I think we’ll start to find that it’s remarkable
what we can actually carry on living with.