Blue and Yellow Makes Green

I must be the only thirtysomething (hangin in there) who’d never done it. ‘I can’t believe you’ve never tried it, you’ll love it’ veterans said. ‘Don’t do it at the weekend and you need to know exactly what you want’ was the advice. Well, that’s not me for a start. Not good with choices, a biteen indecisive at times. And it isn’t off the ground The Youngest licked it, turning into her ‘aul one. She has trouble deciding which cereal to have (just a choice of two, it’s not a hotel buffet breakfast after all). Bless her. As for clothes, just as well she has a uniform, that’s all I’ll say. Thus, I have avoided it like the plague, for many reasons. ‘You will come away feeling inadequate’ one of my inner voices said. ‘You will have no more excuses’ the other voice said and that one has a tofty condescending Oxfordshire cadence to it. But alas there was stuff to get and an executive decision was made, we’d give it a go. SatNav set to the great Blue and Yellow Mecca of Interiors...IKEA.

Off to Milton Keynes with the pair of us of a Monday morning. Himself blessing himself walkin through the doors. The anxiety building already. I don’t like big shops. I get discombobulated. Dundrum Shopping Centre made me dizzy the one and only time I was in it. As for Macys, it just vexed me and I came away hangin for a pint. If I had the reddies I’d get meself one of those personal shoppers. Now with IKEA it’s angst at a whole new level. Those Blue and Yellow people mess with your heads. That’s another motive for not setting foot in the place,  there is the chance that forever after one might feel a slight pressure to have all things in their place.  Anyone who has had the IKEA experience, and that was everyone except me, will know what I mean. Yip, those little rooms they have set up all nice and organised. They should just put up a few banners, in really big writing shouting ‘come on then, get a grip, you could do this to!’.

You may have seen it in some real life houses where people allegedly live. I certainly have over here. Everything aesthetically pleasing, atmospherically lit, cushioned, countered, shelved, shuttered and drawered to within an inch of itelf.  And not a sign of a faux leather couch in site. But what you don’t see in these all very ideal IKEA rooms are the piles that gather on the end of the kitchen counter, hall table or wherever.  Like a small tip for random things. The arbitrary items that escape from the handbag or the schoolbag or wherever...leaflets, bills, hair clips, lip gloss, a glove, glasses case, loose change, half eaten apple, packet polo mints, unsharpened pencils, more bills, used bus and cinema tickets. So the Blue and Yellow people who design these ergonomically exquisite spaces really think of everything. Ergo, no excuse for clutter, for bits and bobs. I am no longer an IKEA virgin. Regrettably, my predictions were correct, my inner voices spot on. It will take more than wicker baskets and a few shelves to organise my life. Now where did I put that half eaten apple?