Texts and Rugs and Cinnamon Rolls

Gosh chums - where has the summer gone?  Not having been away (saving ourselves for a big holiday in October) I seem to have had very little R 'n R and a great deal of driving miles and miles and doing things for others and not much for myself.  There's been lots going on - we celebrated son's graduation with a very creditable 2:1 and his new job which he will start at the end of this month.  My mum turned 90. NINETY!  Amazing - especially considering some of her lifestyle choices. Ahem.

I have had a birthday (although not a significant one) and daughter has turned feral and has hardly been seen.  I wrote about her Ayia Napa activities here, following which she was home for a week before taking off again - back to Greece for a spot of island hopping with her two best friends. Nice to be rich, huh?  She got back at midnight the day before her A level results came out.  Having heard all about the holiday, we got to sleep at 2am and I was woken by her jumping on my bed at 7.30 shrieking "I got in! I got in!"  so, although we had no idea of her grades at that point, we knew that her first choice Uni had pushed the 'yes' button and she is onto her chosen Journalism course. Of course we're thrilled for her.  And for ourselves.  There's no doubt that we will miss her madly but, to be frank dear reader, if she stayed at home, one of us would die.  And anyone else who has lived with a teenage girl will know what I mean by that!

Which leads me on to the topic of this post.  Ah yes - a visit to Ikea was deemed necessary to stock her up with requisites for the great departure in a couple of weeks' time.  Naturally, she had been out the night before and was a wraith at 10am when I woke her.  It took almost 2 hours to get her out of the house, via some "like, really urgent" phone calls to a friend and friend's mother which involved a degree of arse covering on behalf of the friend and which I chose not to ask too closely about.

We live roughly half way between two branches of the Swedish superstore so we had the enviable choice of driving to the shithole that is Wembley or the shithole that is Croydon.  Whoop, whoop.  Several hours of crawling round motorways, dual carriageways and gyratory systems later, we landed up in the gorgeous environs of Wembley. Famous for its stadium and, er, its stadium.

Naturally, Ikea was mobbed - mainly by stressed-looking women and bored-looking 18 year olds whose answer to every question was the same.

Mother: Will you need cups and plates or are they provided?
Teen: Dunno
Mother:  Shall we get some of these towels?
Teen: Dunno
Mother:  Would you like one of those nice rugs?
Teen: Dunno
and on and on and on.  My own child seemed to have mastered the art of shopping with one hand whilst texting non stop with the other, pausing only to complain that "there is like NO signal down here".

I'm certain they pump something into the air in Ikea stores.  Why else would I ALWAYS find myself unable to resist about fifty quids' worth of tat?  Why do I trot round the Marketplace grabbing fistfuls of paper napkins, yet more glasses, mugs, kitchen knives, plants, and CANDLES, sodding stinking CANDLES that I could well do without?  It drives the Shah insane and I can understand why.

Yesterday, I exited £183 lighter.  A hundred and eighty three quid! FFS! And that was spent on what?  Well, it was spent on this:-

Doesn't look like much but doesn't everyone need two sets of fairy lights and a butterfly picture?

In the queue to pay, we got chatting to another lady whose daughter crossly accused her mother of not loving her as much as I love my girl on the grounds that I had bought so much more stuff.  I glumly suggested that she should take lessons in mother-conning from my daughter and the pair of them sniggered complicitly.

To add final insult to injury, it seems that Ikea no longer sells packets of cinnamon rolls, beloved of both children for years.  It's all the excuse I need not to go back for a very long time....