Haven’t posted anything for a while now, here are the 3 reasons why:

A) I moved home

B) I bought Modern warfare 2

C) Inspiration.

Let’s delve into A.

It took me a while to welcome the idea of visiting IKEA. In fact it took persuasion and convincing that it was the best option. The closest IKEA to us is 2 hours and 30 mins away. So you can imagine my reasoning behind needing the said persuasion to get to me go.

Me: “Can’t we just buy a bed in Argos?”

Girlfriend: “We can, but the closest to having sex in it would be with your right hand.”

Me: “Point taken. IKEA it is.”

[Argos is a cheap all sorts shop in the UK]

Ok, it didn’t go 100% like that but it may as well have done. I could have just said “Or your mum”, but sadly the mum joke doesn’t work like it does with male friends as it does with your girlfriend, and I’m also mature now. I like to think.

So, on the Friday, the day before we moved into our new place; we ventured to IKEA. The journey up there involved a couple of arguments, 30% silence and the rest was piss take. This was a fraction of what was to come.

Upon arrival  I was quite suprised to see this averaged sized blue building, not the massive football stadium sized crap filled brick I’d expected. The car park was probably one of the biggest I’d ever had seen though, which led me to the following conclusion:

Small Building + Big Car park = Crammed Building.

Great.

Girlfriend: “Shall we get some food before we start?”

Me: “No fuck that.”

On our way in, checklist in hand, we stepped onto the escalator up into the main building. There was a car park underneath you see. Which led me to my second conclusion:

Big Car park + Underground Parking + Ground Level Parking + Small Building = Fucking crammed

Anyway, despite my anticipation, it was ACTUALLY not that packed. You know what was packed?  The cafeteria. “haha” I thought to myself, “all those guys who didn’t have the ball to just say no.” So we went on into the showroom. The showroom is basically loads of different room layouts, from kitchens to bedrooms to study rooms to kids rooms. Fairly impressive. (I forgot to mention as you walk in, you pick up a pencil, ordering pad and a tape measure. I was denied to tie the tape measure around my head, and rambo style it through Ikea.). Anyway, showroom, yeah, great.

Me: “Lets go find this bed then”

Girlfriend: “Yeah ok.”

We found the bed in the Bedrooms section. I liked it. It was only £89. That’s cheap. It’s also actually a nice bed.

Me: “Sweet. This place isn’t so bad after all. It’s actually really not that bad…”

Girlfriend: “£89 for the head and end bits honey. The slats are…and the side beams are…and the mattress thingy is…so its £160 in total”

Me: “Fuck this place. Why the hell has it got a whopping great £89 on top? This is not right. Why don’t they just say it’s £160, false hope giving cockrockets.”

Girlfriend: “Shush. I like it”

Me: “Ok, it is nice. At least the slats will be cheap”

The slats were £50. (They also were the biggest pain the arse ever to put together.)

Bed in the bag! Not literally, too heavy. We’d accomplished the main mission. Onto the next bits and bobs, “this shouldn’t take too long I thought.”

3-4 hours later we entered the ‘Market Place’. Which, is stage 2. The market place is the best bit of Ikea, A ton of stuff at real good prices, we bought 6 wine glasses for £2. One broke when we washed it the next day and nearly took my girlfriends hand off but hey, £2. The one failure, quite a big one at that, with the market place is this:

Anywhere With Trollies Should Have Enough Space For Two To Fit By Eachother.

Ikea’s Marketplace fails at this miserably, thus I may suggest they install some traffic lights or something. That and perhaps a shotgun installed into the front of the trolley.

Me:“Marketplace out of the way. Sweet. What’s next?”

Girlfriend:”Now we take this ordering pad to the warehouse and find the bits to the bed and desk”

Me:”What, they don’t take it off you like Argos and go find it?”

Girlfriend:”No”

Me:”Genius”

Girlfriend frowns.

Me forces fake smile.

Me:”Just kidding, lets go get this awesome bed!”

Girlfriend: “Sarcastic twat.”

Warehouse entered, off to find the bed. This part was fairly easy, Ikea marks all the lanes really clearly and has little computers all around the place that say “Help Find My Parts”, which I found amusing. So we went to get the bed head and end bits. Lane 34, to the end…

Me: “Holy shit. Thats massive. It will NEVER fit in the back of your car”

Girlfriend: “Of course it will, come on, put it on on the trolley and lets get the BED SIDES and go.”

Me:”For f…”

So we did just that. I parked this box, which was wider than my arm span, onto this trolley, which was the size of a skate board.After we got the BED SIDES we set off for the tills to pay up and feck right out of the place.

The Till section to queue up: Same as supermarket tills in terms of wideness.

The Bed head + End: The width of 4 tills.

Solution: Stand big box vertically and balance on shoulder whilst pushing trolley through. [REMEMBER THIS PART]

Anger level: Severe.

So, we reached the actual till. The woman scans the bits on the trolley in her scanning area, which incidently is wide enough to fit the box horizontally. How conveniant Ikea, thanks.

Anyway, after a little argument with the cashier after she charged us the 50p for credit card usage when it was a debit card we went to the car park to pack up. The closer we got to the car the more my girlfriend started to worry and the more I started to smile.

Girlfriend: “Don’t fucking say it. We can fit the box in sideways. It will go.”

Me: “yeah, did you also know that planes use Dr pepper to fuel them?”

No reply.

Anyway, the box didn’t fit, we had to take the bed bits out, shove them as far in as possible, tie the boot down and drive at a measly 40mph all the way back. We were however laughing about it all by the end and it turned out to be a great experience and something to tell the…guys about.

That night, in bed, as we lay next to eachother, dosing off, my girlfriend says:

“Oh…no. I didn’t see the BED SIDES when we unpacked?”

Me:”…what?”

“did you put them back on the trolley when you rearranged it?”

Me:”I fucking hate Ikea.”