Once more unto the flat pack dear friends.

“No fucking way, there’s no way I’m going back.”

“Look I'm going to see Transformers, so you can at least help me carry some stuff back.”

Like a convicted criminal I boarded the bus of the damned. As urban boxes gave way to suburban living boxes, it dawned on me that maybe they kept places like Ikea so far out because people in the know realise how dangerous they really are. Apart from becoming refuges for zombies, if the physical structure of the place were ever to crack, all the bottled up resentment and frustration would erupt, spreading a toxic cloud of malice across North London like a consumer’s Chernobyl.


Once inside, things didn’t seem too bad. There was a holding pen for children, the bags were big and yellow, they even had free pencils and list paper. How civilized. It was all a façade, a honey trap to catch and torment me for the next two hours. At first, the child like maps, with ‘You are here’ and squiggly arrows strewn all over, made me feel at ease. Look, they’ve even got areas where you can sit down. These would prove to be the equivalent of fox holes in Stalingrad, where my compatriot and I would try and regroup, our bloodshot eyes, from the horrors we’d seen, darting around nervously.

Worse than anything the place is a barrage to the senses. Billions of colours rape your eyes, the distinct yellow uniforms of the staff, which initially seemed like a good idea, make you want to curse them as they constantly run off and you're left in a sea of tack and consumer idiocy that makes you cry out for the life ring that is their yellow uniform.


That being said the absolute worse thing, which has made me lose all faith in mankind, is the act of going against the arrows. We got lost and with no maps nearby decided to retrace our steps. The seemingly innocuous act of going against the arrows proved almost lethal. It was like the running of the bulls, except with retarded shoppers. Legions of consumers three abreast and ten deep, armed with trolleys and bags with protruding lamps came rushing at us. Their brainwashed minds could not comprehend someone going against the ordered arrows. “We must obey; we must follow the pointed ones.” A small respite was running into a friend and it was just like what bumping into an old comrade from basic training, in the middle of Normandy would have been like.

“You made it!”

“You too!”

Offering a cigarette.

“Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em”