This from a recent Sunday Times should cheer you up
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-clarkson-review-ford-focus-estate-h5w52jhjgYes I know it's a Clarkson review of a car but he does tend to wander and here's the relevant bit
Now, when I need a coffee table or a small armchair, I spend a day or two wandering round the Conran Shop. Or I visit an antiques fair. Certainly, I will make a mood board on Pinterest and study glossy magazines such as Coffee Table Weekly. But having just spent what he considers to be perfectly good beer money on a not-at-all-interesting washing-up bowl, my son was in no mood to waste time. He wanted to get into the furniture shop and out again as quickly as possible, so he could get home, order a curry and fire up the footie.
So he went to Ikea, did some speed-shopping and arranged to have everything he needed delivered on the day he moved in. Unfortunately, the van arrived at 6.30am, which is a time of day that no 22-year-old is aware of. Frantic phone calls were made, followed by a decision to go to the pub and have a nice cold pint until the whole thing blew over.
Amazingly, it did. Ikea found another van and that night a chirpy Scouser delivered so many boxes that, pretty soon, the sitting room looked like that warehouse where they stored Indiana Jones’s lost ark.
This is the sort of thing that fills me with dread. I know some people can look at a laptop or a steam train or a lawnmower and know instinctively how all the components go together, but I cannot. I look at a plug and a socket in the wall and, even to this day, I’m filled with pride and wonderment when I successfully join the two things together.
As my son is also like that, he suggested going back to the pub for another nice cold pint while the furniture goblins got busy. But I explained that, in the real world, you have to do things for yourself. And we got to work.
I unpacked the sofa, and as all the pieces and all the little bags of bolts and washers spread out like a wave across the floor, I began to feel overwhelmed. Because, to you, a bolt and a washer is a bolt and a washer, but to me, it’s a red wire and a green wire, and if I cut the wrong one, the ship and everyone in it will explode.
This meant I had to become unmanly and break out the instruction manual, which was a series of simple diagrams. Well, they would be simple to you, but to me they looked like the architectural drawings for a submarine base.
Nonetheless, with my special tongue-out concentrating face applied, it all started to come together. To get some parts attached to other parts, I had to adopt a few cruel and unusual yoga positions, and that made me out of breath. Also, I sprained my thumb at one point and then I dropped the big part on my finger, which really hurt, but after just three hours — and without once using a hammer — the sofa was built, and when I put it the right way up, it didn’t wobble or fall to pieces.
I’d never really come across Ikea before. I’d seen the shops, obviously, and I’d been told that everything in there is very cheap. And perhaps, because of that, I’d driven past as quickly as possible so I could get home to read my new copy of French Dressers Monthly. But having built that sofa, and seen how strong and robust the finished product was, I’m wondering why anyone would buy anything from anywhere else.
