I recently took part in the Expert Patient programme run by Body Positive North West, which is the self-management of a long-term health condition for people with a chronic disease. The words chronic and disease make it sound frightening and depressing, which HIV is of course, but the course in itself was fantastic, mainly down to the amazing people who both run and frequent BP. Far from being depressing, I for one found it totally inspiring as well as being an uplifting experience, as we spent most of the time laughing.

We also cried a bit, learnt a lot from hearing each others story’s and also dealt with practical issues such as how to cope with the side effects of the medication, fatigue and depression etc. To help us to overcome these typical HIV hurdles we were encouraged to make a weekly action plan, which was both attainable and sustainable. For example, on days when it was all just too much, and we’d all suffered from those, we came up with a list of various ways to deal with it. At the top of the list, proposed by Cath, was to have a sofa day, which included for her the watching of Jeremy Kyle.  This may not be everyone’s cup of tea and I personally would prefer ‘Vivienne Vyle’ Jennifer Saunder’s spoof version of the aforementioned ’counselling’ reality show – but each to his or her own.

Sofas, in one way or another, have become an indisputable and necessary part of our daily lives. Philip and Fern for example, would be lost without theirs as would Richard and Judy. There is also something called the ‘Pink Sofa’, a cyberspace version of the everyday sofa, which serves as a lesbian website and chat-room. Maybe we need an HIV cyberspace sofa? I wonder if they have any going cheap at DFS?

Just as we need them, sofas need us and every sofa probably has a story to tell. Take the psychiatrists couch for example. As we approach the festive season, we are continuously bombarded with adverts for sofas. Various celebrities, usually unfashionably on their way out, lounge on them and tell us, order now and you can have this one in time for Christmas or sit on this one in the New Year – or pay for it some time the unforeseeable future. Then, of course, there is the ‘oh no, not another sofa sale’ advert to drive us all mad. Sofas are being flung at us from every direction.

I have always held a theory that when couples start looking at new sofas, there is usually something amiss, like a pending divorce, then it will be a case of who gets the sofa. When I was first diagnosed, for some reason I had to go out and buy some new sofas. Of course, now I am a  counsellor I am forced to consider the symbology of the sofa at a deeper level and I have come up with the following. Aside from being extremely comfortable as you can stretch out and rest your weary head and feet at the same time, they are usually conveniently positioned near the telly. All the better to watch, ‘I’m a celebrity get me out of here’ or the ‘X Factor’ of course. But more significantly, sofas, as a general rule, tend to have arms. This is highly symbolic as the arms are subliminally offering the equivalent of a much needed hug, something which positive people are often denied and in great need of.

We can then dig even deeper and look into the types of sofas we choose and why we choose them. A bit like breeds of dogs resembling their owners – or vise verse. Ask yourself, do you look a bit like your sofa, or is your sofa starting to look a bit like you? I know mine is starting to look uncannily like me, because it’s beginning sag and if you poke down the sides or under the cushions, I might find things I’d lost years ago. A bit like the old joke of finding a sixpence under one of your bosoms, or not being able to do the pencil test to find out if your bottoms dropped because it has already dropped too far.

Therefore, your sofa can say a lot about you.  Does your sofa actually have arms, or is it armless? An armless sofa such as a futon is Japanese, so not armless then, the opposite in fact, which means you wouldn’t want one of those in your prisoner of war parlour. And talking of wars, the chaise lounge is French and only has one arm, so say no more.

I remember my mum once bought a new three piece suite which once delivered and squeezed into her tiny house took on epic ‘Alice through the looking glass’ type proportions. When she sat in the huge arm chair she virtually shrank and disappeared and her legs didn’t reach the floor. She was so frightend of the enormous sofa, she refused to get up the next morning and we eventually we had to send it back.

A final note of caution. Beware and be very careful indeed if your action plan involves a sofa, because there is also something known as the ‘couch potato’ and we wouldn’t want to become one of those.