Planet flatpack
Have you never felt the call of Ikea? It’s not just any home-furnishings store, you know. It’s not even just any out-of-town warehouse type shopping experience. It’s an adventure. Now is the time of year for a visit. What will you do when the relatives arrive and discover that you are still using last year’s sofa?
My friend Kitty wants a wardrobe. It’s years since we had a home-improvement day and Ikea is a day. An entire day, you understand. We set off in my car for London’s North Circular Road, the original UK branch and fount of all other Ikeas. A car, or a hired van, is essential for your flatpacks. More or less all Ikea’s furniture comes in a flatpack, as I’m sure you know.
But we missed the turning. The glaring yellow and blue monolith of Ikea hove into view, then hove out again. We had to weave all round the back of Wembley (‘Look, we’re going past John Thompson House,’ Kitty cried. What a memorable landmark!). Many others, in grand cars (oh yes, Ikea is good enough for the moneyed) loaded with flatpacks, were similarly at sea, either pre- or post-Ikea. It’s deliberate. They make Ikea visible, but inaccessible, in order to induce a desperate desire to arrive.
But at last we were in the car park. It was lunchtime. Ravenous, we pounded for the cafeteria and the famous Swedish meatballs. The server was an intellectual with model looks. I pumped bitter red jam from the sauce section on to my meatballs because it was in the picture on the wall. Otherwise my choices were driven by the strange names: dryck lingon and krokant cake. ‘Princess cake’ was a lovely pink, but the name was no good. I can report that the balls were springy, but harmless; the mash was real.
You begin to notice that nothing is quite as elsewhere. The toilet signs suggest that a female figure in a smock might be present in the men’s lav, bending over a baby whose head is detached from its body. Hanging from the restaurant ceiling, another sign pointed to a ‘nursing area’ but below was just a bit of blank floor – lovely pale Ikea wood, of course – and no sign of a nurse. Kitty (yes, Kitty is a man) started to worry. We’d set off on the great trek, you see. That’s another way Ikea is like no other shop. You follow arrows on the floor through the displays and once you’ve started there’s no short cut, no early exit. What if we got lost?
We progressed through Living Space and Kitchens and Bedrooms. Whole Ikea rooms are mocked up. There’s even an entire two-bed flat you can enter where, according to our friend, Genevieve Suzy, fake couples pose for photographs that they hope will convince Immigration.
The thing is, it’s all perfectly nice. Clean, simple designs, the classic Scand look. Although some years ago, Ikea ads said to, ‘Throw out your chinz’, now they’ve thrown it back in again. You see young couples, style conscious but humble, gazing at what their first home will be. It’s a touching sight.
But shoppers at Ikea defy definition. Not just young professionals – all classes, certainly; but they’re not at work and not on holiday either. Nor are they taking time off work. The truth is, they’re at Ikea. All other worlds are banished.
Kitty suddenly decides he only wants a wardrobe with legs and that it must be small. So he homes in on a large one with drawers underneath and no legs. It seems it’s for another day, though. What other day? Kitty says, ‘We can always come back.’
‘Oh yes,’ I say, ‘when we’ve next got 12 hours to spare.’
Now I’m getting anxious: where are the sets of china, the bedlinen, the lampshades? I’d forgotten about downstairs. This is the real heaven of Ikea, where it’s all so cheap you can easily afford to develop all kinds of sudden needs for your home.
We got a trolley and drooled over some Ming-like ware in a lovely jade shade. But nowhere to put it; although a bit of a mistake, as Ikea china comes and goes. If you don’t seize at once, you’ve missed it.
But our trolley was still worryingly empty, until Kitty chanced on some curtain-pleating tape. He hasn’t got curtains planned in the immediate future, but you never know. In Fabrics we came alive. We found a strong cream weave with children’s drawings all over it for my chair covers. No sign of any staff. Suddenly Kitty saw a label: ‘How to buy fabric’. You cut it yourself. We had a whale of a time. It was like playing shop. The scissors were on a chain. ‘I’m going to chain up my teaspoons,’ Kitty said, ‘especially when you’re round.’
Then it was Lighting. A woman was saying, ‘The cat’ll play with it’ of a tall paper floor lamp. To make the point, she knocked it over.
Absolutely darling crewelwork lampshades. Divine mini-chandeliers in amethyst and gas-mask green. A splendid arachnoid lighting piece.
Rugs: suddenly I needed a rug. You could get Persian for a song. In the end, we checked out with, apart from the aforementioned, a bag of clothes pegs, a steel floor light (the Format), some freezer-bag ties, a cream lampshade and a fabulous ruched cream duvet cover.
Couldn’t have been happier. Meanwhile, a lady with 500 frying pans in her trolley rattled forth from the till in triumph and, in the car park, in heroic solitude, a man was patiently loading 20 flatpacks into a hired Europcar van.
My friend Kitty wants a wardrobe. It’s years since we had a home-improvement day and Ikea is a day. An entire day, you understand. We set off in my car for London’s North Circular Road, the original UK branch and fount of all other Ikeas. A car, or a hired van, is essential for your flatpacks. More or less all Ikea’s furniture comes in a flatpack, as I’m sure you know.
But we missed the turning. The glaring yellow and blue monolith of Ikea hove into view, then hove out again. We had to weave all round the back of Wembley (‘Look, we’re going past John Thompson House,’ Kitty cried. What a memorable landmark!). Many others, in grand cars (oh yes, Ikea is good enough for the moneyed) loaded with flatpacks, were similarly at sea, either pre- or post-Ikea. It’s deliberate. They make Ikea visible, but inaccessible, in order to induce a desperate desire to arrive.
But at last we were in the car park. It was lunchtime. Ravenous, we pounded for the cafeteria and the famous Swedish meatballs. The server was an intellectual with model looks. I pumped bitter red jam from the sauce section on to my meatballs because it was in the picture on the wall. Otherwise my choices were driven by the strange names: dryck lingon and krokant cake. ‘Princess cake’ was a lovely pink, but the name was no good. I can report that the balls were springy, but harmless; the mash was real.
You begin to notice that nothing is quite as elsewhere. The toilet signs suggest that a female figure in a smock might be present in the men’s lav, bending over a baby whose head is detached from its body. Hanging from the restaurant ceiling, another sign pointed to a ‘nursing area’ but below was just a bit of blank floor – lovely pale Ikea wood, of course – and no sign of a nurse. Kitty (yes, Kitty is a man) started to worry. We’d set off on the great trek, you see. That’s another way Ikea is like no other shop. You follow arrows on the floor through the displays and once you’ve started there’s no short cut, no early exit. What if we got lost?
We progressed through Living Space and Kitchens and Bedrooms. Whole Ikea rooms are mocked up. There’s even an entire two-bed flat you can enter where, according to our friend, Genevieve Suzy, fake couples pose for photographs that they hope will convince Immigration.
The thing is, it’s all perfectly nice. Clean, simple designs, the classic Scand look. Although some years ago, Ikea ads said to, ‘Throw out your chinz’, now they’ve thrown it back in again. You see young couples, style conscious but humble, gazing at what their first home will be. It’s a touching sight.
But shoppers at Ikea defy definition. Not just young professionals – all classes, certainly; but they’re not at work and not on holiday either. Nor are they taking time off work. The truth is, they’re at Ikea. All other worlds are banished.
Kitty suddenly decides he only wants a wardrobe with legs and that it must be small. So he homes in on a large one with drawers underneath and no legs. It seems it’s for another day, though. What other day? Kitty says, ‘We can always come back.’
‘Oh yes,’ I say, ‘when we’ve next got 12 hours to spare.’
Now I’m getting anxious: where are the sets of china, the bedlinen, the lampshades? I’d forgotten about downstairs. This is the real heaven of Ikea, where it’s all so cheap you can easily afford to develop all kinds of sudden needs for your home.
We got a trolley and drooled over some Ming-like ware in a lovely jade shade. But nowhere to put it; although a bit of a mistake, as Ikea china comes and goes. If you don’t seize at once, you’ve missed it.
But our trolley was still worryingly empty, until Kitty chanced on some curtain-pleating tape. He hasn’t got curtains planned in the immediate future, but you never know. In Fabrics we came alive. We found a strong cream weave with children’s drawings all over it for my chair covers. No sign of any staff. Suddenly Kitty saw a label: ‘How to buy fabric’. You cut it yourself. We had a whale of a time. It was like playing shop. The scissors were on a chain. ‘I’m going to chain up my teaspoons,’ Kitty said, ‘especially when you’re round.’
Then it was Lighting. A woman was saying, ‘The cat’ll play with it’ of a tall paper floor lamp. To make the point, she knocked it over.
Absolutely darling crewelwork lampshades. Divine mini-chandeliers in amethyst and gas-mask green. A splendid arachnoid lighting piece.
Rugs: suddenly I needed a rug. You could get Persian for a song. In the end, we checked out with, apart from the aforementioned, a bag of clothes pegs, a steel floor light (the Format), some freezer-bag ties, a cream lampshade and a fabulous ruched cream duvet cover.
Couldn’t have been happier. Meanwhile, a lady with 500 frying pans in her trolley rattled forth from the till in triumph and, in the car park, in heroic solitude, a man was patiently loading 20 flatpacks into a hired Europcar van.