A visit to IKEA is a sure-fire-way for us to end up SHOUTING AT EACH OTHER, but I have some almost unbelievable news. We didn’t. And in case you didn’t quite catch that: WE WENT TO IKEA YESTERDAY AND WE DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING NASTY TO EACH OTHER. NOT EVEN ONCE! Now, that is more than can be said for a lot of the other people who were there, but I really and truly couldn’t give a toss about any of them because we, we had a good time there! And we agreed. About everything. That is — EVERYTHING! Nobody agrees about everything, ever, so this is just plain abnormal. Not only did we go to IKEA, we drove there, in Cleo, and we chose to go to The Other IKEA, the one we haven’t been to before and weren’t quite sure how to get to, we drove through the middle of town and nobody beeped us — which is like saying that Austrian drivers are really friendly and such great parkers! they never use their bumpers to shove other cars out of the way and would never, ever dream of parking on the pavement (side walk to Americans) — but today it was real — nobody beeped us! which is more than can be said for me who both beeped, stuck my finger up and swore eloquently at the idiot who cut in front of me so close I could actually read the fine print on his bumper sticker, thus giving Kevin a serious panic attack lest the IDIOT driver should decide to cause trouble, i.e. hit him. I reminded him that we are not in London and guys here don’t hit the partners of small women with balls*.
Kevin’s IKEA routine is to head off to the ‘restaurant’ (I put that in inverted commas because I am a snob and their signs may call it a restaurant, but in the real world a restaurant is a place where people get served by people who come up to your table and take your order, then you wait for well over an hour, complain about the slow service at least twice and are thoroughly schloshed on all the drinks you had to order while you waited before you get your food — which you are unable to taste or even eat because you are under the table singing excerpts from ‘The Boyfriend’) where he scouts out a roll, butter and coffee — which he apparently only gets because of the free refills — before we do anything else. I usually grab one of those hideously sweet Daim-cakes which has me insanely queasy by the time I’m half-way through, and a cup of tea.
Then we head off through the showroom-maze where I sit on and fiddle with everything that can be sat on 
and fiddled with in silent(ish) tribute to my mother and our joint IKEA visits in Norway where we regularly caused things to fall apart and my father disowned us both while we giggled hysterically. Kevin hasn’t disowned me yet; he normally joins in the fiddling instead. Walking away very fast has happened. Yesterday we behaved (almost) like the grown-ups that we are and only bounced on a few chairs for good measure, though we did startle the odd dog leaving the odd owner looking puzzled, but at least the dogs were left smiling once they realised we were harmless. Sort of. We ended up with a load of stuff that may eventually force us out of here due to a shortage of free floorspace, but we’re close to Karlsplatz and I’ve heard that a bunch of other homeless people hang out there so we won’t be alone.
Now I’m going to go outside, onto the balcony, where I’m going to pretend to know what I’m doing with little green things. Judging from the picture on the left, I may have been overly generous with the seeds. I didn’t expect the combination of seeds, soil and water to work.
* See ‘Key”-page for explanation. I’ve forgotten why this is a compliment.
