Banging your bookshelf

Do you ever get that yearning for Ikea?

After I trashed my room on Monday this terrible urge developed.

While tidying up I realised that one of the corners was in desperate need of an Aneboda.

For the uninitiated an Aneboda is Ikea-code for a chest of drawers.

Now, this is this most important thing... I have nothing to put in these drawers, I have no need for more furniture - all I needed was to visit the Ikea and purchase forty pound's worth of shite.

The Ikea nearest me (Neasden Ikea) is apparently the busiest Ikea in the Northern Hemisphere (or something) and arriving on Saturday night at 9pm, I can understand why.

You park your car in this vast car park in North London on a Saturday night, walk into the store and it is heaving with DIY shoppers. You cannot move for the thousands of people, like a wave, who're stomping through the shop grabbing cheap candles and discount laundry baskets.

In warehouse aisle 44 I find my Aneboda and go to pay for it, however I am accosted by Ikea Food.

This is where they flog cheap Swedish imported food at bookcase prices...!?

Now, you probably don't know this but in South Africa, the Afrikaans word for shit / drippy brown stuff is "kak."

So this made me laff:

In South Africa this kinda translates into "drippy apple shit."

Finally I get home at around midnight with my drawers.

Now, anyone who's been to Ikea knows that when you've bought flatpack, it has to be assembled asap.

Thus, here we are at around half-past midnight on Sunday morning.

I hauled out the hammer and the twisty-turney thing to start assembling my purchase.

Just to let you know that the Aneboda requires some hammering. Actually, it requires a lot of hammering which wakes one of our neighbours up at around 1.30am.

Ding, dong!

"There's a terrible banging noise coming from your flat?"

Bobby (putting down the hammer to answer the door): Really? I can't hear anything. How odd... are you sure it isn't the people next door to us?

Neighbour: Hmm, maybe... oh well . Er, sorry to bother.

Bobby: Yes. I have to be up at 6am tomorrow morning and you've woken up me but that's okay. Bother me repeatedly, I can handle it.

Neighbour: I'm really sorry, I just thought that er... maybe... um, sorry to disturb you.

Bobby: I have to go back to bed, good-bye.

2am and after repeated smashing, hammering and knockabout, the drawers are completed.

I have nothing to put in them, so...

It's nearly 20 days until Cape Town and I am salivating. Warm weather, beaches and sand. That's all that matters now.

Sand in the toes, reading lazy books on the beach and the sand in your crack.

Yeah, I can deal with that.