… selling my body on the streets of Granville from now on, after what I spent in the IKEA in Caen today.
About a third of what I need as well, so it’s going to be an ongoing process. But what I have already bought will make a huge difference, once I summon up the effort to unload it all out of Caliburn.
It goes without saying that I fell asleep mid-film last night. And I was off on my travels, ending up at a hotel where I was to be staying. I had a car full of stuff and told the people not to worry – I’ll just dump it all in the room that I usually have, totally overlooking the fact that it was still only 07:00 and there were probably people still asleep there, never mind the room being prepared and ready.
Back here though, I was wide awake at 06:30 and up and about breakfasting by about 07:15. I managed my shower too – which was really nice – and then I was all outside ready for Liz who was turning up at 08:30.
Driving through the pea-souper, we were at the IKEA at Caen just after 10:00 and went to the café for a coffee to gather our wits before launching the attack.
Just by way of a change, I was quite disorganised – although that’s more the fact that I’ve never done this kind of shopping in IKEA before. In fact, it took up until 14:30 to make the first pass for all of the bits and pieces.
But then I was made aware of this system whereby for just €25 extra, you can go from department to department, simply registering your requirements with the information desk there, paying at the express checkout,and then waiting for about 90 minutes for them to pick it up, load it onto the trolleys and push it out for you.
In other words, the first pass took about 4 hours. The second pass took less than an hour and then the 90-minute wait. And I had three big trolley-loads of stuff too.
There’s a service whereby they will send someone to help you load your car too, so while we were waiting, we started to load Caliburn ourselves. And we had him loaded up and gone before anyone came – that’s how efficient we were.
Back here, we just unloaded the essential and heavy items between us, and a very friendly passer-by grabbed hold of one end of the bed to help us upstairs too, which was very nice and neighbourly.
So now I’m completely exhausted. Too tired to make tea. I’d be going to bed too but the mattress has to wait 48 hours to uncurl itself before it’s possible to sleep on it.
And so it’s the sofa for another two nights anyway. And I’m not going to hang about.
