reports of a pack of smashed tealights have been greatly exaggerated

I awake with a strange sense of purpose.

Well, actually I lay in bed listening to Woman's Hour with the duvet wrapped around me and slowly develop a sense of purpose which I suspect is directly related to my lack of interest in the Polish Women's Movement, but essentially a sense of purpose appears, as if from nowhere.

I leap out of bed and complete my ablutions. In the bathroom.

Downstairs, I check my email, scowl, and go into the garden to read. Half an hour or so later I remember my sense of purpose, and come back to the living room to find my tape measure. Which is precisely where I left it. A small but important victory in the tape measure wars.

I have a dream of pristine shelves, with books on. Books that have languished in boxes for the last ten months, unloved and unwanted. Books which frankly are still mainly unwanted but would look a damn sight better if they were on shelving, and might get sorted out if they were to be removed from their boxes.

This meant one thing. A trip to That Place. A trip to IKEA.

I bloody hate IKEA, or to be more precise I bloody hate the fact that IKEA is filled with people and their children. On the whole I am a fan of both people and children but in combination with furniture shopping I develop a strange and almost immediate connection with violent tendencies that I usually keep reasonably well buried. In short: going to IKEA makes me want to kill people.

However. I had a dream of pristine white shelves, and pristine white shelves are to be had at IKEA for a mere smear £35, so it needed to be done. Over the years I have developed a guerilla approach to IKEA: get in, grab things, get out. As I knew precisely what I wanted I did not see any potential problems ahead. I even checked that the item was in stock. And it was.

A couple of hours and a small traffic jam on the M25 later, I was in the store, all kharmic calm. So pleased with myself was I that I floated through the kitchen area and picked up rainbow tealights, even stopped to browse the small dining tables. I wandered through the new 'summer area' silently thanking all available deities that I was single and childless as I dodged bad-tempered parents and their excited offspring. After a slighly frustrating few minutes trying to find the right aisle for my self-service flat pack, I reached my goal. Me and Billy; Billy and me. Shelving. Pristine. White. Marvellous.

Only I forgot one tiny little thing, didn't I.

I forgot that a 5ft3 and three quarters 38 yr-old woman who weighs less than 150lbs canonot actually LIFT the sodding flat pack onto the trolley, let alone wrestle it from her car and get it up the steps to her house or indeed the stairs to her spare bedroom.

Bugger.

Anyone want to go to IKEA? I promise not to be too homicidal.....