IKEA

I don't like shopping malls, supermarkets, where people try to push themselves (plus shopping carts and buggies) absent mindedly through corridors lit by white shining spots, and I found out I don't like IKEA, either. (I went to the one at home a few months ago, and I thought I liked it, and I imagined how I would shop there to decorate my place when I had a place - but no - I don't like it.)

I accept it, the idea is novel - you cut millions of pieces of wood and plastic and glass instead of hundreds - economies of scale. Then people make one trip for everything they need (and didn't know they need) instead of ten trips. You make order lists and stand in huge check out lines (a fight broke out in the adjacent line when I was there) and everything is oh-so-efficient and functional and clean-cut. So are our homes. But where is the individuality, where is the story of a coffee table you bought in Camden and carried all the way through Regent's Park? That would be special. But in IKEA, I don't see how anybody could feel special. I don't know if anyone cares.

Still, it was nice to have good friends along to stand on the check out line with and endure the sickening bus ride to and from Wembley. Maybe that's the key to feeling special. Being with special people who think you're special. Then you don't even wonder whether you're special, because you know you are. Something like that.