The kitchen chair I usually use has broken. In fact, to all intents and purposes it ceased to be a chair about five years ago, and I'm not sure why I'm still trying to sit on it. Sentimentality, maybe This weekend - taraaaaa!!! - we decided we would replace it.

All I wanted was a wooden kitchen chair, preferably with arms, something rather large and comfortable that I would pad out with my patchwork cushions. You'd think a plain wooden chair for the kitchen would be pretty straightforward, wouldn't you? The only think I insisted on was being able to see the chair before I bought it.

Think again. I began by making a list of all the furniture retailers within about 18 miles. I had about twenty. I began dialling and discovered that about half of those had gone out of business in the last year. I'd say another seven are probably on their way, judging by the way they fielded my call.

Number 1. We say we have the chairs in stock, but actually we don't. Well, we have some of them. We can't tell you which ones, you have to tell us which ones you're interested in and then we'll check and see if we've got them here. Delivery will be about two months anyway....

Number 2 - We do have wooden chairs but whether they're kitchen chairs or not is a matter of interpretation (I kid you not. They actually said this.)

Number 3 - Ha ha ha! No. Sorry.

Number 4 - We don't sell wood any more. (this in spite of the fact that their website was full of wooden furniture, and the firm's name is something like 'The Wooden furniture company' ) When pressed, she said 'Well, we sell some wood. But we only have one wooden chair and that's got wheels on it.'

Number 5 - We only sell chairs if you buy the table as well.

Number 6 - We have wooden chairs but nobody's priced them yet.

Number 7 - Um.... we have some Indian chairs, will they do? When pressed to describe all they would say was 'They have metal bits on the back.' Can you describe them? No, not really.

THe mind boggles.