‘Can you help me move in three weeks' time on Saturday?" Frank asks me.
I have to say I've always preferred helping someone else move to moving myself.
I would rather break a friend's expensive vase than my wife's expensive vase.
I'd rather my good friends' sofa didn't fit through the stairwell, than my own sofa. The removal of Ross's sofa from the series Friends is my favourite scene, and not without good reason ;-)
But that wouldn't happen with Frank at all.
If there's someone I know who is very particular about their belongings and looks after them really well, it's Frank.
I can picture it now: in every room of his old house, boxes are neatly stacked with little labels indicating what's inside and where the box needs to go.
Can't miss it, that will be an easy move.
So yes, I'd be very happy to help Frank.
’On Saturday mornings, a few acquaintances and I trickle into Frank's place.
Coffee!
Yes, lovely. But that one's already wrapped, of course. Frank can't think of everything.
So, with high spirits, we start loading the belongings into the rented van.
Frank always gives instructions on the order everything should go in the bus. Lovely not to have to think for myself for a day.
If I see another piano in the room, I say to myself: don't think now! Frank has surely already done that thinking!
After a few trips with boxes, sofas, beds and wardrobes, the piano is still standing.
I'll keep my mouth shut.
But my hope that the piano will be left behind in the old house is dashed.
The piano isn't moving with Frank to his new house, but to his aunt's.
Frank's aunt lives in a flat.
It's only one flight of stairs.
OK, one step with a bend.
Have you ever done it, carrying a piano up a winding staircase with four people? And a Frank constantly shouting: careful, the piano has just been tuned!
My advice is to hoist that thing through the window, not up the stairs. And then have Frank do something else.
Right then, we're nearly there. The piano's almost at the top. Just the last bend to go.
The sweat is running down my back and into my pants. The other movers are starting to smell a bit too. This job can't take much longer.
The piano seems to just not fit. Or does it?
I give it a good shove and hear something creak.
'Careful!' shouts Frank.
‘That was just the railing!" I shout back.
And I give it another good shove.
That was a bit too little policy.
Something in the piano breaks, and the whole thing falls apart. With a tremendous crash, all the piano's parts tumble down in pieces.
Now it fits up there – says one of the removal men drily. Yes, in plastic bags.
There is little more to be salvaged from the piano.
Voting pointless now. Bad faith thing.
That'll be an extra trip to the recycling centre. Nice sight: all those black and white keys in the residual waste bin.
We are sitting contentedly in Frank's new living room.
Frank is Chinese and is getting beer.
We look around and wonder how on earth all that rubbish got into the living room. Did he have that many boxes for the living room?
We smirk at the thought that Frank will have no boxes in any of the right rooms tonight.
But yes, if we'd put all the boxes in the right rooms, we would have finished far too quickly. Then there wouldn't have been any Chinese food and beer for us afterwards.
Perhaps you shouldn't ask me to help with your move.
But I can help you with a bus. For tomorrow all Removal vans in the Maastricht region reserved, but if you still want to move before the end of the month, Are there a few more available next week?
PS for fans of Friends, go on then: Ross's couch that keeps shouting PIVOT.
