Random Ironies

This is the irony of the situation.

Our stuff arrives, there is much too much of it, so what do we do? We go out and buy more stuff!!!!

The main trouble being that we have no storage space in this house, so it was off to our most hated place in the world – Ikea! - for under the bed storage etc.

Every time we go to Ikea, we say “never again,” but, within the course of two years or so, we are drawn inexorably, moths to the blue and yellow, woody, meatball smelling hell of it.

This time, I went into battle determined that we would come out with only what we needed, instead of loaded down with a ridiculous number of candles, photo frames, kitchen utensils which seem like SUCH a good idea, but remain untouched in a drawer for years and, miraculously, we won! But it was a hard fight.

Rupert, who hates Ikea even more than me, and who is usually the stronger one, had a particularly hard time of it. “But don't you think this might be a good idea?” “Oh look, this is just what we've been needing for - “, “Hey, this would be a great thing for the -” the sentences would flow from his mouth, even as his eyes begged for mercy. But it was the look in his eyes that convinced me to keep battling. Other couples passed us and you could see that they had lost the battle, for their eyes wore the dazed, zombified expression of the fallen, as they pushed their trolleys around, loading them up with items which would undoubtedly be unpacked later with astonished cries of “What on earth -?”

Maybe I am too much of a scrooge, but it appals me, every time. Maybe it's my Liberian upbringing, but it hurts to see so much stuff, such an orgy of buying, such a lust for homogenised THINGS that this place brings out in us all. After paying for our STUFF, it was almost a surprise to exit into the car park in England and not to find ourselves back in Brisbane again, the homogenisation was so complete.

Is it just me, or do other people feel the same way?? Answers on a postcard please – or better still, on this page or the facebook page! Actually, wouldn't mind a few postcards....

And meanwhile, we have added to our STUFF, against my better judgement, by buying a television. This is the first time in my life that I have had a television, except for a brief period during the Gulf War in Riyadh, when my parents bought one so that we would watch the propaganda machine at work. Back in Brisbane, we had a projector, so that we could watch videos, but it only worked after dark and we only used it a maximum of three times a week. However, we can't use said projector here, due to lack of space, so we caved in and bought a telly, which arrived this week. Now that the kids all have iPods and we have two computers, it seemed silly to hold out against screens. So now we have a TV and can waste our evenings channel hopping in a search for something to watch...and so far, it has sat in the corner largely unused, because when we have switched it on, even with a thousand channels, most of what is available is so mind numbingly numbing. Though there have been exceptions and a promise of exceptions, meaning that I have already mentally reserved an hour on Wednesday and Sunday evenings for goggling. Is this the beginning of the slippery slope? Is this the end of my novel, my memoir and my blog writing?

Oh well, I can comfort myself with the fact that I have a jar of pickled herrings in the kitchen.