Ikea

If there is a Creative Memories of households then it is Ikea.

No, wait - that would be Amway.

Lets try again.

Ikea - love the meatballs (with the LingonBerry jam of course!), don't like the scary shoe things but they do have interesting kitchen objects and some quite handy furniture, which once you have blasphemed at for a couple of days actually turns out to be servicable and not-to-bad-looking.

Mrs Grendel has been visiting Ikea. I know because I found a little round apple-corer-peeler thingy and a new 2007 catelogue on the computer desk when I got home. Also she told me she was going - but lets not spoil a good story. . .

Ikea has (up until now) been a place of annual pilgrimage for us. Around the time our tax check comes in each year we take a little of the money and follow the arrows along the convoluted journey that is the Ikea experience.

I must confess that last time I was there in an act of singular rebellion I walked the length of the store AGAINST THE ARROWS!

This was met with frowns from the pram pushing families and chargrin from the arrow-following swedish tourists (why would they come to Ikea - it is like McDonalds for Americans - just that little hint of home?)

But it is March, and we have been to Ikea 3 times already in 2007. The products have all ended up in the scrapping room and I sense this latest foray into the flat-packed paradise is merely a precursor to a big hit on the house remodelling budget for the front room (formerly the site of the home theatre and now, alas almost certainly to be a den of scrap-iquity. . .)

Worst of all though is that Mrs Grendel went while I was at work so I missed the meatballs!