September 2010
We had tried hard to be good parents: and what do good parents do? They save things for their children in special places in their homes called lofts. We then had carefully put into our loft china and furniture, lights, kitchen equipment and glassware, rugs, curtains and towels that we no longer needed or had inherited, always with the idea that ‘these will be useful for the boys when they get their own places’. And the day came when both our offspring had left home and Jonathan was about to set up in his own place. The time had arrived to unveil all the hidden jewels of the loft: we fondly remembered how thirty years and another world away we had been so grateful that friends and family had given us things for our own first home. The offer was made: and decisively rejected. We were now out of date: we had not become acquainted with the great Norse god, a deity mightier than even the all conquering ‘Tesco’ – the god ‘IKEA’.
‘Why would I want your second hand stuff when we can go to IKEA and buy new – it’s excellent value and it will be fine.’
So that was that. The treasure trove in the loft was redundant, swept away before the all-powerful Scandinavian multi-national. And a visit to the great emporium was arranged. Of course it must be understood that not every locality is blessed with such a place of worship: only chosen, favoured spots in this green and pleasant land can boast of this amenity and the multi-cultural town of Croydon is such a spot and it was towards Croydon that our family group was bound one Saturday afternoon in mid summer. Unfortunately so it seemed were all the other inhabitants of this corner of our sceptered isle.
You must remember that it was the summer season and it is a well known fact about many of the inhabitants of the urban areas of these isles that when the temperature reaches towards hot, clothes go out of fashion. So when we negotiated the suburban roads of Croydon and like thousands of others wended our way through once leafy Mitcham into what the 21st century romantically dubs a ‘retail estate’ we realised that we stood out from the crowd. We were not dressed in the correct garb for paying homage to the god IKEA: that clearly should have been scruffy jeans, skimpy tee shirt and scruffy trainers. But there was no going back and we were sucked in towards this great temple of mammon: or at least towards the vast car park, a huge area of hot tarmac marked out in bays over which brooded the yellow and blue sign telling us that we had indeed arrived.
The foolish idea that one could chose the department where one wanted to shop was soon proved incorrect: garish signs and arrows on the floor showed that even if you knew what you wanted you had to follow the shuffling crowds of worshippers along a pre-set route, passing the side chapels with their altars dedicated to various house areas and home deities like ‘plastics’ and ‘bedding’. There was no avoiding one’s fellow men and their fractious offspring: the huge wheeled trolleys for receiving the offerings of the God: the lobster baskets that knocked into you full of the smaller goodies that humanity was buying as if tomorrow did not exist.
And so we descended: down, down into the windowless depths. This was indeed Dante’s Inferno of the 21st century. Would a great hand come down and pluck me out as one of the saved or was I condemned forever in this windowless, crowded box smelling the stench of humanity or at least of their latest take-away? Where were the polite assistants of yesteryear with their ‘Can I help you Sir?’ Where even was Mr Peacock? This certainly wasn’t the visit to London’s West End stores of my youth with the treat of tea at a Lyons Corner House to follow. Assistants were scarcer than gold dust: perhaps the God IKEA doesn’t allow helpers, I thought?
Eventually to my immense relief we reached the department we wanted. Furniture: well box upon box of cardboard flat packed imitation wood that passes now for furniture. These megaliths had to be manhandled onto a trolley and then steered towards the checkout whilst trying to balance any other purchase on the top. And you know it is a rule of supermarket trolleys that they always try to outwit you by going sideways rather than forward!
We decided to queue at Imran’s checkout. He seemed a decent enough, reasonably intelligent lad: he at least wasn’t chewing gum and looked as if he had passed through the non-shaving acne stage of the teenage years. But it is another unwritten rule of these places of worship that the queue you decide upon always ends up as the one that takes the longest: at the Dartford toll booths the same rule holds good. I always get the person who drops their money or wants to pay by credit card. But eventually Imran dealt with the customers in front and we wheeled our trolley into the space provided so that he could put his ‘gun’ over the bar codes of our purchases and take my son’s plastic offering to the beneficent god who gave Imran employment and wages to buy his daily bread.
I could see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel now: I was not going to be condemned to eternal damnation in this place: I was going to come through this purgatory and emerge into the sunlight. The God IKEA was not going to have me as a sacrificial victim: once past Imran there only remained the hurdle of the restaurant, if you can dignify the eating area with that name. We steered past this whirlpool with its smell of fried whatever and we were free.
But I had forgotten the other great rule of IKEA. It is laid down that if you escape the clutches of the god the first time, then when you get home with his bounty and open it and then read the commandments for putting together his great gifts, thou wilt be short of a bolt or screw and thou wilt have to return. No, not me: a return screw finding exercise I leave to the youth of today. I shalt not return to this false god. Marshall & Snellgrove might be no more: but at least there is still Marks and Spencer.