Today was my least favourite day of the year. The annual trip to the Glasgow Ikea to purchase items of a household nature could no longer be postponed.A trip to Ikea is up there with root canal treatment in my list of things to which I do not look forward. There is something about shuffling along with a mass of amorphous bovine humanity which fills me with bottomless depression.
The founder of Ikea was a Nazi sympathiser and boy does it show. Those arrows on the floor are not there to direct you, they are there to herd you along like a division of the Hitler Youth minus the swastikas. I am always reminded of 'Dawn of the Dead' as the consumerist zombies shamble along their preordained route. Aldous Huxley would have a field day; the drugged up automatons in 'Brave New World' couldn't hold a candle to the stupefied 'Ektorp' and 'Billy' admirers.
I only go because it's cheap and I can replace damaged or soiled items at minimal cost on a regular basis. I suppose that we should be grateful really; Ikea have been a godsend to young couples and students setting up home for the first time. I don't object to the individuals who purchase the odd item; it's the Ikea obsessives who furnish their homes to resemble an Ikea catalogue that mystify me. WHY? Do they want to announce to the world that they have no imaginative flair whatsoever. Do they assume that everything sourced in Sweden is the epitomy of suave modern design?
Thankfully the ordeal is over. The Ford Transit has been emptied of its oblong cardboard boxes. All I have to do now is assemble the BASTARD STUFF.
10 comments:
Ian Beal (Eastenders when i still caught the occasional episode in the late 80s) had a flat that was completely furnished in Ikea stuff. One of my friends (a bachelor) had exactly the same stuff in his house.
Ikea stuff is "OK". TTheir kitchens are pretty good, some of their furniture is OK. But it's generally "OK", isn't it.
A bit like the Honda ads.
Then again, if you want "brilliant", you have to pay for it.
The thing that most people hate about Ikea is the trauma of the weekend visit there. Absolutely full of a strange mix of mingin' scumbags and lardy-dars, all tripping over each other for the last meatball in the cafe. At least they're open till 10pm weeknights, so that's a blessing for the working masses I suppose.
I mostly buy £17 birch coffee tables to replace the ones bastard kids have carved their names on.
I'm not really snobbish about it. If somethings well made, well designed and cheap I'll buy it.
Me too.
Actually, I'm stupid and buy things that are unnecessarily expensive.
Even if you get there at 9am in the morning you still end up queuing for the best part of the day at the end. Everyone with all that furniture and giant pot plants on wheelbarrows, it's like going through Ellis Island.
I once asked a checkout assistant when the best time was to visit IKEA - she looked around and whispered - 'never'.
Actually it's early Wednesday afternoon.
They do a nice fish, chips and peas mind.
And this very desk I write at it from Ikea, and jolly nice it is too, and reasonably priced.
Ikea was fab when it started, it only went down hill when the all the hoi, like me, started shopping there.
I sampled their meatballs yesterday. They were swamped in some kind of strange gravy.
They were edible in a kind of repulsive/tasty kind of way.
you aren't kidding. that place is scary. I told alex once that I was going to make us rich with some sort of "child-away" spray that allows you to shop (albeit unhappily" with some sort of 5 foot child free perimeter.
Becca
All adults should be issued with tasers. That would keep the munchkin gits at bay.
I'd love a taser. Can you get them from Costco yet?
Chief Constable of the Met has just commented on Question Time that the Brummie police were 'irresponsible' to use a taser. Apparently it might have set a bomb off (if he'd been carrying one). Good to get that sorted. Should have plugged him eight times in the cranium with a magnum. Or chucked a truncheon at him.
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