How curtain tape (and the right kind of pin) saved my life

Oh the drama!

It used to be that every third night or so, I could be found clambering up onto the arms and back of the little sofa 

(Mr Marks and Spencer, who sold it to us, call it a 'love seat' - the very idea!) that sits in our bay window, stretching up to the curtain pole to replace the silly c-shaped rings that 

Mr Used-to-Bee warned me would be a bad idea, when I insisted a few years back that we must have a curtain pole rather than a bendy plastic curtain track. 

Putting up the curtain pole, as I remember, was a tricky job, even for Mr U-t-B who is pretty proficient at all things DIY (very proficient, in fact).  There was much cursing, but in the end the job was done, the curtains were up and I sat back and admired my so-much-more-attractive-than-a-bendy-rail pole.

But within days I was having to admit that Mr U-t-B might have had a point.  The passing c-rings had a habit of  dropping off and unless you were in the gentlest of moods when drawing the curtains, you were likely to have at least one of the darned things bounce off your head before the job was complete.

And then the things needed to be put back in place, which necessitated the scaling of the sofa and hazardous balancing betwixt arm and window-sill.  Manys the time I felt the sofa lurch slightly window-ward as I tried to correct the curtain droop brought on by the absence of c-rings.

A bad case of curtain-droop

In my usual, over-dramatic way, I could see the local newspaper headlines some years down the line 

'Octogenarian dies in tragic sofa-catapulting accident',

with details of how I would be found, amongst the dewy alchemilla in the front garden, surrounded by shards of glass and still clutching one of the blasted c-rings in my hand, the culprit-curtains blowing gently through the shattered window...

I knew I needed to do something to solve the problem, and today was the day!

So I made merry with the Quik-Unpik and took the sub-standard heading tape off - I thought this might be to blame as it had all sorts of baggy bits of cord where the stab pins used to catch.

And I went to a local curtain fabric shop and bought some new tape, and asked their advice.  When I mentioned the stab-pins, there was a sharp intake of breath from all three of the salespeople.  'She's got stab-pins!' one exclaimed.  

And thus it was that I discovered that the problem had most likely been one of the wrong kind of pin, which had caught up in the tape causing the rings to catch and fall off.

So armed with good quality tape and nice bendy pins with no sharp bits, I came home and set to.

Soon one curtain...

 ...and then the other were back in place...

...having been drawn smoothly along the pole with no trouble whatsoever!

So if you ever do hear of an octogenarian being catapulted through their sitting room window, it won't be me!