A colourful wooden stool with a surprise

This, below, is the bathroom in my boyfriend's flat. Why am I showing you a photo of it? Well. To illustrate some excellent bargain-finding. 

It was always a frustrating room for me, because  the mirrored bathroom cupboard above the sink is fixed insanely high up on the wall. OK. The real problem is that I measure not much above five feet. And so I had to jump up and down, or risk breaking the loo seat by climbing up to stand on it every time I wanted to see in the mirror.

There was talk of buying a little stool for me to stand on (yes, like a child) but only when he'd saved up for the £300-odd lovely Ercol one he'd seen. Needless to say, the stool didn't appear. I nearly even bought him a second-hand milking stool I'd seen in an antique shop for Christmas, but figured it's probably bad form to buy someone a present for yourself. Besides, he had set the bar high for this stool, so he might have hated it anyway. The loo-seat's days were numbered. Until...

...he found the perfect stool. Nice, isn't it? Good design, wooden, great colours, right height – really perks the room up, too. It's not a million miles from this sort of thing they sell at the super-designy store, Twenty Twenty One, for £334. So... with this and Ercol in mind, I asked how expensive it had been. He was gleeful: "Six pounds!! And you will NEVER guess where it's from..." I didn't. Can you?

Parents of young children may know: this chirpy little piece of furniture is from The Early Learning Centre (he was buying a present for his tiny niece). Right now it's even cheaper, too, in case you are interested – just £3.60 in the sale. On the website it looks distinctly nursery-ish. Which just goes to show that these things are all about context.