JACK fm - Oxfordshire

What is it about Ikea?

and more importantly, why is it I have not thought of a similar business to make myself a fortune?

Seriously... it's BASIC furniture and BASIC accessories. There is stuff in that store that we would walk right past if someone was selling it at a market stall for £1, mumbling under our breath ' cheap tat'... yet put it inside that giant blue and yellow building, and we all go 'OOOOOH. What a bargain.. let's get two!....

Don't get me wrong.. I have long participated in 'The Ikea family day out'... You may be familiar with it? You decide you need an extremely vital product only Ikea sells, e.g candles (!)... and convince yourself their cheap price makes it worth the hour drive (and petrol) to go there... To be fair though, this weekend they were doing 21% off everything instore on Saturday, thus those £2 candles were now about £1.60...

So there we were Saturday evening.. 6pm, we set out to visit Ikea, armed with a map from Oxford to Milton Keynes, kindly provided by Ikea.. (which we were able to print on our own paper, thus making us believe we had saved money in some way no doubt). Being somewhat suspicious of the route, the first thing we did was ring Trev, after all he was known as Mr Milton Keynes, having worked there for many years... he answers the phone, we ask ' is this the How To Direct Us from Headington to Ikea Helpline'? .. his response 'Certainly is, do you want me to talk you in, we are in the store right now' ! 

What a great feeling of relief (no not that we could get directions - more about not being the only saddos in Ikea on a Saturday night)... Subsequently we use the handy printed map from Ikea to turn over and scrawl down a couple of directions from Trev, and take a completely different route via Bicester...

An hour later, we are weaving our way through the store marvelling at the displays, opening drawers, oohing and aahing at the tidiness of these not actually used by real human beings displays...imaging how that perfect kitchen would look in our home... (the truth, which you do not want to accept instore is that kitchen would look perfect, we would just have to remove a bedroom and possibly the living room in order to fit it)..

We spend I guess it was a couple of hours wandering the store.. I feel a bit of a failure because all I pick up is a little bag of stones (you know the type - polished, sit candles in them).. and a pair of dish scrubbing brushes for 29p, which are for work anyway, as i'm sick of finding a smelly wet cloth sitting in water)... 

I notice that down in the area where you collect your flatpack furniture there is a strong smell of chipboard and extremely raw pine. Somehow I do not feel upset at not making any major purchases...

As we line up to pay for our purchases with several hundred other people (by now it's about 930pm) we are surrounded by bags and boxes dropped by people who obviously made the error of coming during normal hours and gave up on the queues. (Or perhaps died of exhaustion, and their bodies were dragged away to the flatpack coffin section out the back)...

My favourite memory of the night was the guy in the line behind us who had a flat trolley, piled high with boxes, on top of them was a red Ikea cushion.. and lying upon the cushion was the head of his 8yr old daughter, who was dead to the world, stretched the whole length of the boxes.    They even managed to scan the boxes without waking her.

How we both wanted to be her..

x Sue

Trev is officially a porker!

It's official, I am a lazy good for nothing layabout that will never have a six pack again...I had one once, honest,I have a photo somewhere, I will dig it out, thats of course if I can find it, because I am so lazy I can't be bothered to look for it!  I stated in a recent blog that after the last golf trip of my life (with the baby coming, according to every wannabe golfing Dad, the other beautiful game has very little chance of letting me have a hack for quite some time) that I would head down the pool, cut out beer during the week and leave the potatoes and pasta to Mrs Marshall...Well....That was a complete load of BS...I have eaten more in the last week than I have ever done, I don't know what is wrong with me, I look at food and something in my head says "EAT IT, GO ON, YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO"....

I put this down to the latter stages of pregnancy and Mother Nature making sure that as a Father in waiting, that I will be healthy and have the strength to support my family! Pregnant women in the last trimester 'nest', they clean, clean, tidy, nag, clean, tidy and order other people around them to clean, tidy, clean some more, hoover, wipe, dust, throw things away that are not needed and definately not to nag back! Nesting is well known ahead of the big push, but for the men, as far as I can tell have their own word ending in ING, its FEASTING..It is obviously sympathy pregnancy, I too want the attention of strange women coming along to pat my belly and asking when its due, I love all that! We were out with some equally pregnant friends last weekend (both Women and Men!) and when we said that we were going to take a cast of the belly, one bright spark spoke up and said 'but won't that take the hairs off your belly when your pull it off'....I said that my wife was a little hairier now with all the hormones, but not too bad.

That was the night I found the spare room - thats only because our bed is no longer big enough for the two of us!