the chair that wobbles

2025 · 06

One of the kitchen chairs has wobbled forever, in that way where you just learn to sit still on it and never quite decide to fix it. This week I turned it over on the table and looked properly. A back joint had come loose, the old glue gone dry and sort of powdery, and honestly the thing was holding together out of habit more than anything.

Then I took it further apart than I meant to, which always happens. Scraped the old glue out, new glue in, and wound a length of string round and round to clamp it while it set — no proper clamp in the flat, there never is. It sat there trussed up all night looking faintly absurd. Cut the string off in the morning and felt, for no good reason, like I'd done something real.

It doesn't wobble. I keep sitting on it and leaning about, waiting for the old give, and it isn't there. So it goes on the small list, with the drawer, of things that used to annoy me and now don't. The dripping tap stays on the other list. That one's longer and I'm not looking at it today.