First, let me make a confession.

I have not, before now, written for a newspaper. As you read on, this will become clear and it will highlight one of the significant shortcomings in my abilities, that until now, has precluded me from doing so. That being the ability to write well.

However, given the flattery with which the gauntlet was thrown down by Jane, and the amount of Dutch courage coursing through my veins at the time, I though I’d ignore this insignificant detail and agree. One hangover later and I’m confronted by the second ability that a good columnist possess, which I find I am also lacking: any idea at all of what to write about.

Right, no problem, what would a real reporter do? I ask myself. I thought about buying some photos from the web of Brad and Angelina and making something up, but that sounded too hard. How about muckraking? After spending a morning sifting through the rubbish of that house with the big blue mural of Pamela Anderson in St Kilda, a kind Senior Constable informed me that Sam Newman doesn’t live there anymore, and another easy option was closed.

I know, I’ll take cheap shots at a politician and try to write something amusing by pointing out the bleeding obvious and hope that the mere mention of it makes people think I’m clever and witty. Seemed like a great idea until I thought about the possibility of there being some sort of militant Australian Comics Union, that would turn up and kneecap me for so shamelessly co-opting the business model of their constituents.

OK, so that rules politics out. Besides, Kevin Rudd’s 2020 summit has been so widely reported that unless you have been living in a cave in Tora Bora, you would be sick of the sound of it. I certainly am, and will spare you of another diatribe on the merits or otherwise of Talkfest 2008.

That only leaves one real societal scourge to rant about. That is, of course, Ikea. What manner of evil is this place?

Ellie and I have recently seen the light and moved (from across the river) into a nice little flat in Elwood. In doing so however, we found ourselves losing some large swaths of carpet to a serious miscalculation of the number of clothes to number of cupboards ratio. “No problem” I declareth. “It’s cool” I reiterate. I’ll nip down to Ikea and grab us a dresser and all will be at peace in the World. After all, they’re clever those Swedes, you get to build the thing when you get home, thus appealing to my male urges (hunt, gather and assemble), and the guy from Fight Club likes it. Cool? NO, NOT COOL. Tyler Durden had good reason to belt you, whatever your name was, Ed Norton’s Character. Ikea is evil and no good shall come of it. Maybe a little harsh, but I didn’t like it. Here’s why.

I don’t know if it’s a feature of Ikea in general or just a peculiar quirk of the Melbourne version, but the place seems to have been designed by Cubist artists to be completely unnavigable. You head in looking for a dresser and, instead of looking on the map and heading straight to the large section marked “Dressers”, you cruelly discover that to you will have a four and a half mile trek through a store that was clearly laid out by a drunk Russian with OCD issues before you get to the where you want to go. I know what you’re thinking, why not cut across the shop to the right place. Forget it. It’s Narnia baby. I reckon your chances of navigating the back streets of Cairo, at midnight, in a welding mask are higher.

If, by sheer fluke you make it to the right place and find what you’re looking for, ‘those clever Swedes’ have come up with a nice little two part trick to keep you confused. The first part is removing the temptation to grab what you want and take it to the counter. No, you grab a tiny pencil and write the name of your happy choice on a piece of paper and head to the warehouse to retrieve it.

Herein lies the second challenge, a strange naming convention that seems to stem from the Ewok dictionary. Rather than being called a lamp, or a table, or a dresser, it’s a Haarg, or a Gmorgon, or a Flunde, or something equally as nonsensical. Yeah, I know, it’s probably Swedish, and I should stop complaining, but that’s not the real issue. You see, when you get to the warehouse that houses all the boxes of bits that eventually form your beautiful new Hugen-Flugen-Loogen-Doogen dresser, you find that Hugen-Flugen-Loogen-Doogen is actually a range of furniture and after finding the lamp, the wardrobe, the knives and forks and the dog kennels from the Hugen-Flugen-Loogen-Doogen range you give up and start the journey to try and escape the bloody place.

Suffice to say, that Ellie and I are now not the proud owners of a new Ikea dresser. But hey, floor space is over rated, there’s always hard rubbish and at least we managed to get in and out without knifing ourselves, each other or any of the other poor confused shoppers lost in the eternal brightness created by the bloody clever Swedes.

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