A little trip to Ikea

I went with my friend S to Ikea today, she wanted to go last week - and in fact did go but agreed to go again today with me.  This is a good thing because she knew what lane to be in in the very big one way system that you must go through.  We went in her tiny car.  Obviously we are not going to buy anything too big.  Or are we???

After the rigours of the long drive to Croydon (a broken down truck) we thought we would have an early lunch to give us the energy that we were going to need to tackle such a very big shop.  We both had gravlax in a 2-for-1 offer.  This is just the start of the bargains, I thought.  It was nice.  Just as we were considering whether we would top up the bottomless coffees, an announcement was made from the loudspeakers that a 'technical problem' had arisen and we would have to evacute the building.  We had not had the opportunity to marvel at even one 'room' yet. We all trooped in a surprisingly orderly fashion down the stairs (why no panic I wondered). I carried a baby who silently ignored me, but the mother was grateful as she had the other one. It would be kind of fun to have a child who silently ignored you and I briefly I considered keeping it.

It was quite cold outside milling near the staff quite a good distance from the building, which is dwarfed by 2 very large old brick chimneys.  After a while, we noticed that although the staff had all walked safely away from the building, most of the customers that were not driving off, were hanging around the entrance.  Nobody made any attempt to get the hangers-around to move further away.  I found this very disturbing indeed.   S and I wondered if one of our husbands had organised the evacuation ... but he underestimated our staying power.  We were out for about 45 mins. We never found out what the problem was, although one staff member did say that this happens every other week as people attempt to steal expensive rugs by taking them out the fire door.  No wonder there was no panic on the exit.

This reminded me of my visit to Jane Austen's house where I accidentally opened a fire door, setting off an almighty loud alarm.  The volunteer who had to come and free me from the booby trap told me that they had had to put the alarm on because the previous year someone had attempted to steal Jane's desk by sneaking it out the fire exit.  Imagine.  As it is such a tiny little thing it could probably easily fit in any micro car.  It is even smaller than the tiny laptop desks that ikea sell!

So we were eventually back in and pushing trolleys, making excuses as to why our own homes are not as fabulous as the Ikea versions (something to do with moving all the time and always having the furniture that was perfect for 3 houses ago and now stuck with it).  You also have to marvel at the cheapness of Ikea - especially the classic lack table at 4.99.  S reckons she paid more than this 20 years ago.  I bought some things including an almost angle poised lamp for 11.99 and a felt thing called a 'charging station' where we will put the mobile phones , gameboys, ipods etc on a shelf in the study - if I can just clear some space. 

We were allowed to have a top-up coffee for free since the evacuation meant that we had missed this earlier. 

We ended up with a full trolley load of stuff between us, including a plant, several cushions, a couple of giant photo frames and a biggish basket and easily fitted it all into the tardis-like micro car (that already had several fold up chairs and about 25 eco-friendly bags in it).  We picked up Matilda on the way home and jammed her and her school bag in as well.  To her amazement.

Then home to look around my house and wonder what would happen if we completely started again, how fabulous it would all be.  Especially that laptop desk.  With a laptop.... It never ends, does it?