Red Carded From IKEA. Or The Lubyanka?

The Lubyanka?

IKEA?

The last time I went to IKEA I finished my meatballs, the only reason to visit the place in my view, and we had gone 20 yards into the shop itself when I was red carded for moaning. Sent off and ordered by Mrs B to sit in the car and listen to the football on the radio. That's not a record. My previous red card was brandished in my face as I took my first step over the threshold. That huge, soulless, blue and yellow block strikes fear and loathing in me the way the Lubyanka used to do to the poor oppressed citizens of the USSR. Admittedly I like some of their stuff, it's just the shop, and those stupid TV ads, that really bug me.

I was thinking of this a couple of weeks ago as I enjoyed a quiet French Sunday afternoon. Mass in the morning then silence and peace with the shops all closed the rest of the day, apart from the boulangerie. Heaven on Earth. Are we really so busy, busy, busy that we have to do our shopping on a Sunday. Why can't every Sunday, in the immortal words of Morrissey, be 'silent and grey'? And twenty four hour shopping in ASDA, Tesco and Sainsbury? That's just posing that is. "Oooh, I'm just so busy I had to shop for groceries at 2-00am". No, you can't organise your life properly and think it makes you look oh so very important. A bit like people who have breakfast meetings at 6-30am. Get organised! Nobodies that busy or important.

On the way back from France we talked about how shopping had changed in the UK, Europe and probably the world. When I was a kid Gorton in Manchester had Cross Street and Hyde Road. Both crammed, from end to end, on both sides with small, family owned shops. Butchers, bakers, shoe repairers, shoe shops, biscuit shops, greengrocers, clothes shops, hardware shops, chemists, greasy spoon cafes, fishmongers, fish and chip shops, pie shops, cake shops, television and radio shops, fridge and washing machine shops, household goods shops. I could go on. No book shops as I remember, there was a library round the corner on Cambert Lane.

I used to go shopping on a Saturday morning with my mum and my big sister. We'd have to queue at just about every shop, usually out onto the pavement where goods were out on display stands, and carry numerous carrier bags full of the weeks groceries home between us. That was where all the juicy gossip was passed from headscarved housewife to headscarved housewife, much more colourful than the stuff in the Evening News or East Manchester Reporter. Admittedly I would have been bored rigid by the experience in those days and just wanted to get home so that I could go and watch my dad playing football in the afternoon and have a kick about with my mates. But I miss it now.

All there is in Gorton now is a huge, soulless Tesco Extra. It might be an age thing, but I wonder if one day I might find Mrs B red carding me from Tesco Extra too as well as IKEA.

Old Fashioned Saturdays.

Today has a real old fashioned Saturday feel about it. For the first time in ages in the dull, wet, windy season I am not off to a football game on Saturday afternoon. Instead I was dragged off to Satan's own retail outlet, Ikea. But more of that anon.

The big thing I hate about driving at weekend is all the Sunday/weekend drivers. You know the sort, they sit in their spotless little runarounds and daren't ever leave the middle lane (lane 2) of the motorway. It's as if they fear actually moving from lane to lane so just sit there causing a huge tailback and effectively reducing the motorways to two lanes.

Then, on days like this, when there is a bit of rain and spray on the road, on go the fog lights. Why?! What kind of brain fault do these people have that makes them think 'fog light' when they see rain? All it does is refract the light across the windscreens of following vehicles thus causing an immediate danger, they look like brake lights and cause the vehicles behind to suddenly brake.

Then when you do try to pass them they have another brain fault that makes them speed up as you draw level so you end up passing them at 85mph. But as soon as you have passed they retreat back down to 60mph. And, as you pass, you glance left and they are invariably gripping the wheel as if their very life depended on it, their faces are about a foot from the windscreen and contorted with concentration, and they often have driving gloves on. Get the bus you idiots!

So why am I venturing along the M6 on a Saturday with no football to watch? As I said at the start I had to join Mrs B at Ikea. The place truly is evil and I have been given more red cards there by my beloved than in any other shop. The Warrington one is worst of all. I was once yellow carded in the car park there for getting angry when I couldn't find a parking space. Five minutes later we parked and I was so pissed off that I only got into the huge barn of a foyer and Mrs B brandished the red card and sent me back to the car for serious stropping. A blessing really.

But today I behaved and got round without even being tutted at. We got our storage boxes but, as happens in Ikea, the lids for the ones we got were not very good and barely fitted. So we got lids for another type of box that actually fit ours better. Not so clever you Swedish geeks! How can one country produce a monster like Ikea then at the opposite end of the spectrum a writer like Hening Mankell? God only knows.

So here I am now, having left home with Mrs B at the crack of dawn, sat waiting in Manchester for a costume fitting while Mrs B visits parents. Yes a costume fitting. Next week I am working as an extra on my first ever film, Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Jude Law. It's really exciting because over the last twelve months I have been an extra on a few TV programmes but never a film. And a Hollywood film at that, even if it is being filmed in Manchester.

So that's why I'm not at the football.

IKEA Rave

Continuing on a musical note this story , of a mob invading a vile Ikea store for a rave, is a belter.

The store is on the site of an old nightclub and the ravers were paying homage to the late lamented club. Bet you nobody will give a toss when Ikea stores get demolished and built on.

Actually, it's a shame the store wasn't built on the site where locals used to have their November 5th bonfires!