Measurements

Yesterday, I had another one of my ideas.

This time, it was to get some Billy Bookcases from IKEA. I wanted them before the man comes on Tuesday to give us ludicrously fast internetz so that I could tidy all the clutter and books away before the man comes.

I did lots of measuring and decided the quantities and dimensions of Billy Bookcases I wanted, and where they would go. There’s an awkward electrical socket ruining my crazy ideas; you can’t have everything.

I thought we could drive to Milton Keynes, our nearest IKEA, and buy them there. Google said it was a drive of a mere hour and a quarter.

Mr Pandammonium suggested getting them delivered, but they wouldn’t arrive before the man came.  He suggested I go myself: the staff are happy to help load your car up. That wouldn’t be necessary if he were there. He suggested we click-and-collect them to make sure they had them in stock because it was a long way to go if they’d sold out. I didn’t think they’d be sold out because they’ve been mega popular since their introduction in the seventies, and anyway the website said they were in stock. The pizza came, and I forgot all about it.

Awful far

Today, I told Google to tell me how to get to IKEA. It said it would take just under an hour and a half. Longer than yesterday, but still ok. It takes about an hour to get to Peterborough, and that isn’t that far away.

After about an hour, I said, ‘It’s an awful long way.’

Mr Pandammonium pointed out that Google had stated it would take nearly an hour and a half.

I told him about Peterborough. And then it clicked.

To get to Peterborough, you go across the weird fenland roads, which are mainly B roads at best. They often go dead straight for a bit, then turn 90°, then go dead straight again, then turn 90° and so on. The surfaces are often as holy as the pope, and/or subsiding into the drainage ditch alongside. What I’m trying to say is that they’re not fast roads.

The roads to Milton Keynes, however, are A roads, often dual carriageway. They are fast roads.

In an hour, you can travel a greater distance on fast roads than you can on slow roads. And that’s why, after about an hour, it seemed like we’d come an awful long way: it was because we had.

Milton Keynes

I did not like driving in Milton Keynes one little bit. There was roundabout after roundabout, and it was busy, and Google didn’t tell me which lane I should’ve been in, and the lanes on the roundabouts weren’t clear, and there were so many roundabouts, and they were all so busy and some were so big, and the roads were labelled things like V11 and H10. What is this madness?

Parking

We finally got to IKEA, and then we had to find a space in the very full car park with no spaces.  I drove along and round and up and down and round and through and over and under and I’m getting carried away now. Eventually, I got to a sharp corner where I didn’t have enough turning room to turn right in one go because there was a massive white van protruding from its space.

I reversed backwards as far as I could go, so I was jammed against the kerb of the road (are they called roads in a car park?) I was trying to turn out of; I had enough space to turn right. Before I did so, I saw some people walking towards the van and faff about getting in. If they got on with it, I could nab their space. I was very conscious of being stopped in the way.

A black car came up the road from my right, but it couldn’t go round the bend to its right (just past my left) because another black car had come along that way. They both stopped, blocking me and the van, as well as each other. After a standoff, the second black car turned round, so the first black car could move on. (I noticed later from the road markings that the second black car had no business coming the way it did.) I hoped neither would think about snaffling the space I was waiting for the white van to vacate.

You’d think after all this palaver that the white van would be ready for the off, but it wasn’t. When it finally set off, I slipped into its space and heaved a sigh of relief. We were there.

IKEA

I don’t know if you’ve been to an IKEA or not, but they make you traipse round the entire shop whether you want to look at kitchens and living rooms and bedrooms or not. What happens if you realise you’ve missed something, I don’t know.

Mr Pandammonium had never been to one, so probably wasn’t expecting this layout. I’d been to one a long long time ago in a different place, so I thought it would probably still be like this. I didn’t warn him.

We had to go upstairs and upstairs and round and round, following the arrows on the ground and the overhead signs. People were all over the place, stopping without warning like tourists in Cambridge. Some had trolleys, some had yellow bags (instead of baskets) and some, like us, had neither.

Mr Pandammonium spotted the Billy Bookcases. The signs said to take a leaflet, which would tell you where to find the items in Self Service Furniture. The bookcases came quite early in the shop, which meant there was a lot more round and round to go before we reached the self-service section downstairs.

The leaflet I’d picked up directed us to an aisle and a location. We found the right place very easily. Mr Pandammonium pulled out a trolley with a stack of boxes of flat-packed shelves on it.

As I was wondering where to get a suitable trolley to carry the ones I wanted, Mr Pandammonium was looking at the boxes.

‘Will they even fit in the car?’

I looked at the boxes. They were very long. They should be: the shelves are ~2 m (~6.5 feet) tall. They would reach the picture rail in our house: I’d measured.

‘Not even with the back seat down.’

Epilogue

Back at home, I put the kettle on. ‘It’s a good job I didn’t do click-and-collect.’