the boring rhetoric of new homeowners

Welcome to Sweden.

The Brit and I have a completion date for the new flat.

Holy fuckballs of dreams in caramel and Richard Hammond masturbatory amazingness.

We are moving out of the mankhole in two weeks.

With a new house, comes a whole new realm of chitter chatter. And adventure, embarking alongside the outer echelons of furniture wholesale Hell.

Other people are having babies and are talking burp cups; we're buying a house and are talking retro dustbins.

Both are boring in equal measures. But then it's so ridiculously fuckin-amazing having a baby/buying a house, that you talk about it to anyone who cares to [pretend] to be listening.

We went to IKEA. No new house is complete in Europe, without the rudimentary visit to an IKEA outlet.

IKEA is Sweden's answer to flatpack furniture that's accessible to the masses.
You can buy anything at IKEA; including a shelving unit for, say, five pounds.

It's the place, in other words, where you want to get your essentials. Bath mats, toilet brushes, roasting trays.

We arrived in the Sweden's version of Furniture City on crack, in deepest darkest Croydon.

Croydon is known for two things.

1) chavs
2) Kate Moss. Before she got the Burberry account. And was a chav.

Arrive, and focus on remaining focused. In stealth mode. As we weave our way around it's showroom interior. The death of someone can be in an IKEA showroom.

You have to walk through the couch section like it's a maze, and then through the storage section, followed by the oven section and so forth. There's no, say, aisle full of spatulas.

Only at the very end, when you're about to eat your arm off by way of protest.

The place was heaving with fat people. Pushing trolleys and screaming things like, "Wayne! Don't touch that Wayne! WAYNE. I'm going to give ya a bollockin' if you don't put that chair down, you li'le git."

Or "Should we buy ten spatulas for a fiver, or go for the two-for-one toilet brush deal, Jazmyne?"

We turned a corner and saw two of the fattest people I have ever seen outside of Biggest Loser, who were sitting on one of those LaZee Boy couches - you know the type, the sofa with a foot rest that you can flip up with a handle on the side which makes people like me, Laura Ashley and Olivier Bonas simultaneously vomcano.

And these people, who needed a crane to get off the couch, were certainly putting it through their paces. Flipping it up and down, until, five minutes later, you heard the loud crash of a breaking couch, and there was the obligatory announcement:

"Sven. Sven to sofa floor. Sven. Sven Bjorsk to sofa floor immediately."

You can't make that shit up.

We bought our stuff and fled. For the green pastures of Heal's, the store that we masturbate about. And in which we've already spent a packet on cool stuff, like a designer dustbin.

See? Boring house talk. At a barbecue over the weekend:

Peas: Ooh Rob! You should see our new dustbin!

Brit: It's all red and sleek and has this awesome flap on it that you can put rubbish through?

Peas: Oh oh and this amazing foot pedal.

Rob: Mate. Seriously?

Peas: It's amazing, because the Brit bargained the guy down on the red one. Otherwise we would've had to go with a boring black one.

[pause]

Rob: Oh.

The flat was signed today. Good gracious granny pants, now it's just to get 8000 litres of paint and Velvaglo the place into a home.

We are home owners.

And I'm dreaming in bins and picture frames.