a worthless existence

Ikea.

These huge stores tend to have a cancerous effect on the globe multiplying until every corner of the world is infected with one on its doorstep.
Don't get me wrong, I shop at Ikea. Look round my home and the tell tale signs are all there, from Billy storage systems, Poang footstools to Reko drinking glasses swelling in my MFI 1980's kitchen units! And the place still looks a dump.
In recent years pay day for me was an orgy of drinking sessions, clubs and the purchase of endless CD's. This month i celebrated my much needed monthly cash injection with a visit, along with my girlfriend, to Ikea. Yet another landmark in getting older. I still remember the first time i used my hard earned wages to purchase my first 'Toilet Duck', and i knew there and then that i had completed a painful right of passage into adulthood.
Ikea seems to be the perfect solution to a modern day, hard working, havent got a minute to live, flat pack generation. I think its safe to say that shopping there with ones girlfriend is a huge mistake. No sooner had we passed the Ektorp corner sofa units, jodbero plant pots and decorative 'twigs' (we will buy anything they have), and my girlfriend had mentally spent the equivalent of a small nations national debt. They must use psychologists to arrange furniture in a fashion that brainwashes us to believing 'if we buy this, our house will look like this convincing display'. The Ikea experience truly made my nest of tables i bought at Widnes flea market look quite shameful.
My sole purpose for visiting the store was to purchase a new book shelf. I finally selected just the thing, a 'Leksvick storage unit' that somehow looks twice the size in my home that it looked in the shop. Obviously i didnt measure the bugger, im far too lazy for that nonsence i just loaded it to the flat trolley and then somehow defied physics to get it in the car by loading my girlfriend into the boot in order to make the space. It is a towering eight foot collossus of a thing that, even surprising me, took over two hours to assemble and a hell of a lot of bad language and battered thumbs! To select a book from its top shelf i now have to hire a cherry picker to winch me to its airy summit.
But it is all mine, i chose it, i paid for it, i got it home and above all else theres a sweet kind of false satisfaction that i built it. Damned Ikea, beguiled by the bloody Scandinavians, and i know i will be again!