Swedish House Ikea

As long as it’s not a weekend, Ikea is a fun day out. If, of course, you can actually get into the car park. Several lanes crossed, and we realise we’re heading for the motorway we’ve just come off. There’s no going back, no way. Until; “I am not going back on the AP-7! We’ll just have to back up!  I mean we are facing the right way so technically it’s fine. Come on darling, turn around and keep an eye out for the cars coming up behind ok? I’m going to reverse…” & with this warning we literally drive backwards up a road with young Spanish boys in their cars laughing at us as they swerve around our car.

We finally arrive twenty minutes later and I turn to Mother. Struck by her faux-pas; she has bright lilac eyebrows. Obviously she has not yet adjusted to her new makeup layout and unfortunately reached for the eyeliner instead of the eyebrow pencil – a fatal mistake. “Oh NO! Ughh I can’t bloody see anymore darling! Where are my glasses?!”

Our Ikea shop was fairly successful – minus the frequently irritated Mother who aggressively snarled at each and every child who got in her way; “why aren’t you  at school for goodness sake?!” We noticed the laid-back parenting technique most of the Spanish have adopted when we saw toddlers heading straight for the packs of scissors in the kitchen department. Had to restrain Mother from snatching them away. Apparently we are crowd-magnets; we want fabric? So does the rest of Spain. We want wooden tables? So does every husband in the store. It was at this point that I had to explain to Mother the Ikea process. She tried to lift a stool off the display, not noticing it had been screwed on. Her face fell when I told her we have to visit the warehouse with our list at the end and pick up the flat-pack items.

Many, many, many hours later we arrive at the warehouse and managed to pick up three out of four things from our list. Not good enough for Mother as she hunts out the fourth item. She’s told it is showing on the system that there is in fact one left but perhaps it is on a trolley because it updates the system when it goes through the till. This is actually good news for Mother as it is technically still within reach. She sets off subtly looking at everyone’s trolley to see if they have her chair. She didn’t find it but I still wonder what on earth she would’ve done if she had found it.