Two Go Mad in Ikea

Vix and I are currently both ‘sans’ work, so we are making the best of our free days in the manner of lunches, treatments and spa sessions at my gym. Only yesterday’s particular spa treatment was cut short by the spa being closed due to essential maintenance. Apparently the filter in the pool needed changing. No doubt the fault of the really unattractive guy I saw there the other day with hair running all down his back. The kind of length with which you could plait.

So instead of curing our collective hangovers with a refreshing swim, steam and sauna, we decided that we would cleanse ourselves in an entirely different way – with Swedish designed disposable furniture.

I shop at Ikea out of necessity. That being I simply can’t afford to buy my shelving units from Heal’s. I probably visit Ikea about once a year and every visit is preceded with the kind of excitement you feel when you’re very young and your parents take you on a special pre-Christmas trip to Hamleys. It’s the promise of a trolley full of the kinds of things that you didn’t realize that you needed – sets of three matching sandblasted vases, miniature cactuses and the odd Ficus tree.

Yet whenever I actually arrive at Ikea and walk through the doors (it really bothers me, by the way, that every single Ikea I have ever been to, from London to New Jersey, has looked exactly the same) the excitement is washed from me and I am left with the feeling that I left anything resembling personal quirkiness in the carpark. There is nothing in Ikea to dislike. And you have this eerie feeling that you have in fact seen everything before. Which you probably have, in the homes of numerous friends and colleagues.

Anyway – I set myself a budget of thirty pounds and for that I managed to purchase a basic wooden four shelf unit (the kind found in every university student’s bedroom), a wooden box for a white orchid plant and a three photo picture frame. Pretty good going, nest pas?

Did you know that the actual price you pay for the absurdly cheap (68p) Ikea hotdog is that the hotdog itself is, well, gross? Until yesterday I hadn’t actually had one before, but Vix assured me that I really did want one, so I relented and she gleefully bounded off to the hotdog counter while I fumed in the obscenely long queue for the checkout.

So the colour of the hotdog is not the standardized red of the common hotdog, but rather more like a kind of beige. Which led me to think that maybe the hotdog was in fact chicken. Then there is the skin of the hotdog which is extremely thick - only god truly know's what it is made from. So thick was the skin that I was unable to bite through it. Ok, this has something to do with the fact that I currently can’t bite down fully on my front teeth. The effect of this dental misalignment was that whenever I took a bite I actually just squeezed the hotdog meat through end of the skin. I’ll leave you to imagine the overall effect. Vix thought that it was highly amusing. Which of course it wasn't.

I am going to the Tate this afternoon to reestablish my appreciation of aesthetics and design. I might decide to adorn my new Ikea shelving unit with a snazzy new Anish Kapoor bedside lamp.