Selling our Souls to Sweden

So, Mr. DD and I have some sort of mental deficiency when it comes to shopping. As much as I would like to try to blame it on the brand of lighting that they use in the now dreaded showrooms of Ikea, it’s probably more likely that the both of us are total gimps.

So, after discovering that we'd FORGOTTEN TO BUY THE BED on our first trip, (not difficult with 3 trolleyloads of flat pack stuff that all kind of look the same) we made another to buy the bed and the mattress and to return a defective chair and some curtains obviously made for the Tallest Windows in the World. As one might expect, although we only received a refund of about £45 pounds in total, we came back out again with about 350 pounds worth of crap. Although we got the bed, would anyone like to place bets on whether or not we picked up the replacement for said returned, defective chair? (hint: DON’T.)

Being not only brain dead, but masochists as well, we dragged ourselves into the Swedish hellstore yet AGAIN on Sunday, (for the “absolutely freaking last time") which, for anyone who’s ever done that before, (we’ve only ever gone on weeknights) you’ll know can severely damage your faith in humanity.

For example: After I disembarked to get some last minute supplies at Asda next door, the Rock Star witnessed an example of karmic justice playing out in the parking lot. A Chinese man was waiting for a parking space when a van load of chavs in a white van cut him up and took the space. Not only did they take the space he’d been waiting about 10 minutes for, but they LAUGHED at him and reached through his car windows to pat him on the head when he remonstrated with them. However, no sooner had this pack of human offal entered the store, when the scorned Chinese fellow returned to let down their tires. Mr DD almost went to help him. He DEFININTELY wished we'd had the time to sit there with some popcorn to watch the show when the owners of the van came back.

At any rate, we picked up most of the items on our list. Although we had some lights to return, the queue was so long, we decided that it was worth the 12 pounds we’d get back NOT to wait in it. We also picked up the missing chair. However, it was the last one in the stack and the box was somewhat damaged, so we had to weigh our options. Do we take it and risk another trip back to return ANOTHER defective item? Our reasoning- if it’s fine, we rock. If we DON’T buy it, we’ll have to come back ANYWAY to get it, so it was worth the risk. (It wasn’t. The chair was utterly smashed when we took it out of the box back at home. Fuck my hat, back we go.)

We have now been there so many times, I have worked out shortcuts through the showroom. This is information that no one should ever have to be burdened with.