yonmei

01:35 pm: Ikea and the Seven Circles of Hell
Yesterday, I went to Ikea. (blue_monday was driver, guide, philosopher, and general Helpful Person, without which Ikea would have been impossible, or at least much more difficult that it had to be.) He was the Virgil* to my Dante as we progressed through the Seven Circles.

Ikea isn't complicated, I suppose (she says reluctantly) but if you've never shopped anywhere like that before, it's certainly not obvious. Not even with the memory of several fanzine articles to assist me. However, with blue_monday's help I established that what I needed was three short fat Billies, with two height extensions, plus one short thin Billy. Plus three extra shelves, two fat, one thin. (I can't now remember why I didn't think I'd need four extra shelves, but hopefully this will become clear.)

In between all this, while looking at desks, office chairs, and chests, I managed to lose my rucksack, and spent half an hour in a state of barely controlled panic until it was revealed that some honest person had handed it in at Kitchens.

Coffee was consumed. I experimented with logonberry syrup, which was dull but sweet. For some reason it didn't dawn on me that we were well past dinner time, despite all the people having dinner in the restaurant, until I noticed that a clock said it was quarter to nine, meaning we'd spent at least three hours in there.

With blue_monday's help, I got the bookcases I wanted from the storage area to the checkout (pausing on the way to buy two exceedingly cheap oven gloves, which I'd been wanting, four reasonably-priced kitchen towels, which I'd been wanting, one non-stick pan at a good price for good equipment, which I'd been wanting, and failed to buy cutlery, because most of it looked ugly. Also, it is a recognised phenomenon that if you buy china or cutlery from Ikea because it looks nice, a year later it's "Oh, you got that from Ikea, too" because everyone's got it. We also were both caught by the scented candles. I'm so into scented candles right now, for a reason which I'll go into in another post.

With blue_monday's help and the use of his surprisingly-big car, I got my flatpack Billies home, and (feeling apologetic at having kept him so late) fed him tea and a scone. chillies rang and we negotiated the wardrobe question. (He and hfnuala have a short wardrobe they want rid of. I have a low-ceilinged bedroom and am looking for a short wardrobe. It wasn't so much a question as "when can you turn up?") I unpacked the thin Billy, looked at it in horror, and went to bed.

The next morning, Billy looked easier, and I had at it. I made one minor mistake, easily remedied (used too many dowels to put the three big sections together, and had to take them apart and put them together again: my fault entirely, the instructions were perfectly clear on this point) and then, while putting the back on, discovered I'd made a humungous mistake - because the instructions weren't clear on this point. I'd put the top on the bottom and the bottom on the top. Figuring this out took me 20 minutes (well, that included a quick check on the Ikea website to see if there was any obvious answer). By that time it was way too late, even if I'd felt inclined, to take Billy apart and start again. So I left it for now: I suspect that this evening I am going to have to take thin Billy apart and start again. However, the next three Billies will be a lot easier...

While putting thin Billy together, though, I had an inspiration.

Many political commentators on the queer liberation movement have queried the sudden turn it took towards same-sex marriage. Back in the 1970s, the lavender revolution was definitively against marriage. Even in the early 1990s, there wasn't that much of a committment to same-sex marriage as a campaign topic, despite the Scandinavian law now providing for same-sex unions. What could have made the difference?

Ikea. While Ikea make small token gestures towards making shopping easier for singletons, the whole concept is geared towards your being a car-owning couple with your own mortgage. Ikea originated in Scandinavia: same-sex civil unions were first legally recognized in Scandinavia: and if you're a regular Ikea shopper, you want a partner who's always going to be there for you, who's trustworthy, reliable, and can help you build flat-pack furniture.

Where Ikea goes, can same-sex marriage be far behind?

But hey. I have four flat-pack Billies, and (hopefully) a soon-to-be-clear bedroom floor. Ethically confusing issues such as these can be forgotten in such materialistic joy.

(*Aeneas, I wrote originally. Why did I think Aeneas? "Arms and the man I sing, who forced by fate, and haughty Juno's unrelenting hate..." to spend years exiled in Ikea.)