Success

Yet another of the many many sorrowful consequences* of Brexshit is that now I don't guide and work out here I seldom get to practice my French, and like any skill, unused it fades.
So I'm immensely happy (& relieved) that over the course of the last 48hrs or so I've managed to  order a sofa, arrange a subsequent collection, hire a van, undertake said collection in a new to me city, take old sofa to the déchetterie** and return hire-Van unscathed all dealing with people with no English :-) 
Part of the attraction of this particular sofa(bed) was that I could figure out how it came apart so that I could disassemble it, manoeuvre it upstairs into the apartment and reassemble it and put it into the available space with 5mm to spare. We've no idea how half our furniture got into the apartment lol.

* Seriously, seven years later can anyone give me a single tangible benefit??
** Where I found today's blip, which I think may be a Chalkhill Blue