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My wife and I must be secure in our relationship as we risked our first ever trip to IKEA today. It was her first trip to the store full stop, so how she ever got out of previous relationships I just don’t know. But we’ve had nine years and reproduced so if it had to end today then that wouldn’t be a bad knock.
It’s been a while since I’ve come and the last time was with Al Murray, and that ruined our relationship too (though we continued to work with each other afterwards, the sexual spark had gone). Today we were specifically coming to look for children’s beds, as our daughter is ready to make the leap from her cot. And that’s the fear: that she will leap out and break her face. So we wanted to see if there were any elegant solutions in this warehouse of acrimony and regret.
My first flat was probably entirely furnished with IKEA products, though I don’t think anything survives to this day (and to be fair it was about 20 years ago that I got my foot on the bottom rung of the property ladder, just before they started pulling the ladders up into the sky so the bottom rung was beyond the leap of anyone whose parents didn’t own a county). I still have some IKEA cutlery I think, but I got rid of my sofa bed last year and the bed that Al Murray and me lovingly put together in 1998 but never slept together on got chucked out a few months before that. It’s a brilliant place to kit out a first home when you’re already low on cash and you can easily buy everything you need to keep you going, though you might need a big van to carry it and some adept mates to help you build it.
Today, luckily, we were focused on just one thing which my wife foolishly thought meant we’d be able to pop into the child department and pop straight out again. NO. It’s IKEA! You must follow the ant trail that takes you past every single candle and mattress protector in the hope that you will be reminded that you need something else. We managed to avoid all temptations and didn’t really like any of the beds, but risked spending a tenner on a rail to fix to the current bed in the room hoping that might suffice (we wasted a tenner as it turned out). But we didn’t have a single argument or raised voice, though my wife did get annoyed at all the walking we had to do. I guess the lesson is that as long as you aren’t really going to buy anything IKEA is an OK place to have a walk. But make sure you both want a walk.
