Expedition IKEA – A potential mixture of dreams and nightmares!

We have decided that IKEA is to be one of the sources of furniture for the house. The nearest store to Lincoln is in the City of Nottingham. Thursday 17^th was the day we had planned to undertake an expedition through the Nottinghamshire countryside, and suburbs of the city to the mysterious land of IKEA. A day for reconnoitring the possibilities.

Our route took us close to Newark and through the town of Southwell The cooks amongst my readers probably know that the Bramley cooking apple variety originates from there.

The distance from Lincoln to Nottingham required an early start to ensure a full tiring day navigating the many pathways in IKEA.

However no sooner had we started than we received a telephone call from Dreams central customer services to tell us that our new bed could not be delivered until the 16^th December, two weeks after our deadline date. Our hopes for sweet dreams were turning into nightmares. The news necessitated an immediate change of route to take us to the Lincoln store to seek a solution to save us sleeping on floorboards. Once again we had to wait for the pedestrian automatic doors to allow entry. After much discussion, with the branch manager, and computer keyboard operation and problem solving by him we arrived at an agreeable solution. We will have our dreams on an improved quality bed, at no extra cost to us, with delivery on the 30^th November.

We resumed our expedition, all be it an hour later.

Satnavratilova didn't fail us, taking us safely through the picturesque countryside and the complicated, depressing, suburbs of Nottingham, “arriving at destination on the left”.

After some five hours of exploration we headed back here to our temporary home. We had negotiated the IKEA store maze, without the help of 'Satnav', several times. We were physically and mentally fatigued. Legs and feet hurting and brain whirling. Notebook full of information for discussion later at our leisure. We survived reasonably unscathed, helped of course by the obligatory lunch, in the IKEA restaurant, of Swedish meat balls, chips and peas, followed by a fattening dessert, and accompanied by the multi-refill drink. We will return for round two in a few days time, once we have rebuilt our energy levels, to make our purchases. We will certainly need another lunch on that day.