There are times in a man's life when he can no longer put off the inevitable.
I'm talking, of course, about a trip to Ikea.
Regular readers will know I'm not good in Ikea, which is not its fault.
If you must go to an international household goods retailer, no doubt you could do far worse. It's not you, Ikea. It's me.
I
t always has been. When I was a child I'd wail in despair when my parents announced a trip to buy household stuff. Something to do with traipsing around looking at furniture has always bored me to the brink.
Such trips always seemed to take all day. But then, they probably did take all day, with kids who were prone to wailing in despair at the prospect of looking at wardrobes.
But it's ill-becoming, at my age, to fling yourself on the floor and pound it with your fists, screaming.
And besides, I want the furniture. We've just moved house and we finally have room for filing cabinets and a proper desk. I could be organised at last.
So I accept that much of adult life has to be spent in a state of boredom. Just don't expect me like it.
Kate chose what to buy, I pushed the trolley and lifted stuff into it.
Sammy did his usual thing of smiling at people, and being quietly sick.
But Zoe... Well, Zoe is three, and so spent the time running away, dismantling cupboards, throwing herself under the wheels of passing trolleys. Then she dived into a bed shouting, 'My new bed!'
She's potty training. It's not a good time for her to be making herself at home in beds on display in shops.
When my efforts at persuasion proved useless; I pulled her out. They could probably hear her screams on the M62.
A voice came over the speakers, reminding parents to keep their children under control at all times. At least I think that's what it said; it was hard to hear over Zoe's screeching.
"You ask the impossible," I grumbled. But just as no-one can hear you scream in space, no-one hears you grumble in Ikea.
By then I was so hungry I could have eaten a plate of Swedish meatballs, had the cafe still been open, but onwards I staggered, increasingly delirious.
On what felt like the 13th day I saw something I didn't expect to see in Ikea – a poster advertising the film, The Road. You know the one – Viggo Mortensen, gaunt and bedraggled, wheeling a trolley through a post-apocalyptic landscape with a weary child at his side, eyes haunted with existential gloom at the hollowness of existence and the frailty of meaning.
No – it wasn't a poster, it was a mirror. That was my haggard expression, my weary child, my existential etc.
The next time we passed a bed, Zoe dived into it, wailing, 'I'm tired ...'
I wanted to crawl in beside her, close my eyes and follow my dreams down.
But, as you know, reader, I'm tougher than that. Somehow we made it to the end, and I stuffed our purchases into the car.
It was a tight fit – Zoe had to sit with her legs draped over the sides of the car seat in a contortion that would have been impressive enough in a Russian gymnast, never mind a toddler.
"Are you okay, Zoe?" I said.
In a tone of cool reproach, she answered: "No, daddy. I'm not."
I looked to my youngest for solace. Sammy smiled at me – and was sick.
awolstenholme@ywng.co.uk
