Bed Settee (From Asian Image)

Bed Settee

10:01am Tuesday 5th August 2008

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I love my bed settee more than anything else in the world.

Many years ago I was embarrassed by the bed settee. It made me feel poor. I felt as if I had failed in life and my failure was manifest in this flowery velvety scum of a piece of furniture.

But as time went on I realised that a bed settee is more than just something we have in our living room.

It is a part of our culture, just like loonay chawal (salted brown rice), the plastic jug in the bath and that coat hanger converted into a chappati flipper.

Our forefathers came to this country with very little but it seems the first thing they invested in was a good, sturdy bed settee.

There is nothing finer my dear Asian Image readers than a nice bed settee. They have so many uses. They are just the right length to lie down on and when relatives come over the settee becomes a bed....pure genius.

They are also far cheaper than other settees, can hold up to seven people at a time and make you sit up straight.

The best thing is how you can put all the crap that won't go anywhere else inside a bed settee. I love it when I go to someone's house and they lift the bed settee up. It's fantastic to see what people keep in there. Clothes. toys, book, nuts, ghur (sweet rock), toilet tissues...the list is endless.

You could actually take your bed settee out on to the street and open a shop with the amount of stuff you have in there.

Another great sight is how a bed settee can still be found in the poshest of houses. They moved to suburbs, have a Merc parked outside...got some really expensive Chesterfields but low and and behold there in the corner like some uninvited guest...buggering everything up is a run of the mill bed settee.

The bed settee cover is an amazing thing. There are people who actually think pink and blue flower covers make their bed settees look better and more expensive.

There are many things we will sacrifice. We will drive better cars..get bigger houses...do away with the plastic matting in the hallway but getting rid of that blessed bed settee is out of the question.

Oh, it gets relegated to some less fancy room sometimes and every now and then you feel like getting rid of the whole thing but deep down you know we can't live without it.

For the truth is the bed settee is more than just a piece of furniture - it is an institution!

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