The Wrong Beanbag: Part I

I had an idea to make a beanbag for Sam. One Saturday when he was going to be out all day I unzipped his sun-bleached, ratty old one, curious to see how it was put together. A cascade of polystyrene balls tumbled out, caught on a draught and floated around the room, sticking to the walls with static and wedging themselves comfortably into the deepest fissures of the floorboards.
I decanted the rest as best I could into an assortment of garden sacks and eco-shopping bags but still ended up ankle-deep. The good news was the pattern didn’t look too complicated – one big circle bisected by a zip at the bottom, six leaf-shaped side panels and a smaller circle at the top.
I took some approximate measurements and, feeling almost in control, headed for John Lewis at Brent Cross
Disaster. I’d hoped for a canvas-type fabric in a grown-up neutral colour; navy blue, perhaps, like its predecessor, or bottle green.
All the haberdashery department could offer was red and yellow felt.
‘Try soft furnishings,’ a nice lady told me. ‘We only stock fabric in Oxford Street now…’
Downstairs, next to the ready-made curtains, I found rolls and rolls of material. Somewhere in there was a beanbag - my beanbag - never before in the field of human history made in exactly the way I was about to make it.
I could soon see why. No one else would bother. Of all the mileage of fabric, not one was suited to my task. This fabric too heavy. This fabric too pink. This fabric too child-like. Nothing for your grown-up man’s beanbag.
But then, I thought, rapidly re-evaluating, perhaps that’s where I was going wrong. Surely a beanbag by its very nature wasn't serious. It was just a sack of airy balls, a fat cloud of fun, a burst of laughter in a silent world. Whilst I’d thought all along that what Sam wanted was a sober, sombre accessory to grace the living room, in fact he was actually screaming out for colour, adventure, escapism… and I’d found just the fabric for that.
Treasure Island. Pirates in hammocks, giraffes in boats, azure-blue seas filled with friendly whales – what better gift for a nautically-minded boy in his mid-forties?
I bought three metres and escaped before the voice of sense could catch up with me.
Back home, though raring to get stuck into Long John Silver, I decided first of all to make an inner beanbag to contain all the wayward balls. Cutting out an old sheet, I pinned the pieces together and started sewing the lot into a giant pear-shape. Then I got a text.
Home in half an hour.
The kitchen was a crime scene of polystyrene, the old beanbag disembowelled on the floor while Treasure Island had landed in the living room. I dashed off the final stitches before madly funnelling balls into the sheeted inside case, watching it expand through puppy fat to big boned to morbidly obese. With seconds left I stuffed the shifting, formless mass inside the old beanbag cover, zipped it up, put it back where it normally lived and frantically started the clean-up. I was prising the last ball from the last crack in the floorboard when Sam walked in.
‘What you been up to?’
‘Not much.’
Later that day.
‘Why are there polystyrene balls in the hoover?’
‘Dunno.’
Sometimes it’s the only explanation.