Conspicuous Consumption

 My back hurts. My back hurts because I am old and also because I do very little to stop my back hurting. I antagonise my back. I'm like my back's older sibling on a long car journey, tormenting my coccyx out of boredom. 

I spend hours every day in front of a keyboard, typing with one finger, and perched on one buttock on a dining room chair. My head lolls to the left, because I favour my my right hand. I can feel my right hip stretching as I lean. My left hand taps expectantly on the table, excitable as a soccer mom on the sidelines, only coming into play if I need to do a capital letter. 

The chair doesn't help. It's a formal dining chair: high backed, elegant, unforgiving. Ideally you want your dining chairs to be comfortable for three hours max, so your guests know when to go home. I sit on this chair for seven or eight hours a day. By that point it starts to take on the properties of a Medieval torture device - something like the Judas Cradle, which would...actually, I'll not go into that. It gets unpleasant. 

Imagine being a torturer. That that was your job. When you go home at night, clocking off, and the bloke working the draw-bridge asks you how work was. "Get any confessions, Jeff?" "Working on it! Working on it! Ha ha ha." "Nice one - see you tomorrow, mate." "See ya, Jez."

"Hi honey, I'm home." "Oh, Jeff! You're covered in shit and blood again." "Well, I don't do it on purpose. It's the job." "I thought you were going to ask them about a bucket of water?" "I was, but..." "Oh Jeff, you need to put yourself forward. You're a good torturer - they're lucky to have you. You deserve a bucket of water. Maybe a rag too." "Oh, sure. Shoot for the moon why don't you?" "Did he talk?" "No. He's tough. I'll give him that. I'll use the Pear of Anguish tomorrow. That's a deal breaker." "I don't know why you don't just start with the Pear of Anguish." "There are ways of doing things, Janice. Rules of engagement. You don't just go in there with the Pear of Anguish. Sake. You work up to the Pear." "...workuptothepear..." "What was that?" "I said open a window - you stink of guts."

Weird daily life of a torturer digression there...sorry.      

 So I thought it might be a good idea to go to Ikea, maybe buy an office chair. Susan can't believe her luck. She loves Ikea. She likes the little rooms they dress. I think that's what she'd really like to do - if she could establish a non-customer facing role in Ikea where all she had to do was dress picture walls and match cushions to wallpaper. She'd love it. She likes things. I'm not so keen, and haven't been there for over a decade. I bought a toilet brush the last time I was there. Quite nice, brushed steel. I don't have it still. Not sure where it's gone. How do you misplace a toilet brush? 

It's a weird place. Ikea is very busy. I don't normally see this many people, this many young families. This many people who own people carriers and Land Rovers. The car park is chockablock full of insanely big vehicles. It's like being at an agricultural show, but no one is wearing wellies or chunky mulberry corduroys. There are all sorts at Ikea. There doesn't seem to be any sort of demographic bias. All human life etc. I wander around, slightly dazed, slightly lost. It's like being at a large international airport I'm not familiar with - I'm fighting the urge to have a pint for breakfast. 

Once inside the numbles of the beast it's oddly restful. I relax. I get into the swing of it. I like the clear demarcations of territory, I like the way they pump different smells into different departments - it's brazen coercion, honest treachery. I also like the little rooms, all gussied up with picture walls and shelves of knickknacks and nonsense. I very nearly buy a golden hare's head you bolt to the wall, which I neither need nor truly want. I nearly bought Susan an articulated wooden hand because she said she liked them, but common sense prevailed. God knows what sort of pheromones they're pumping into you with those bespoke smells. It's baking bread in a house that's for sale on an industrial scale.      

I feel very calm. It's like being on holiday. I'm in a superstructure, with a lot of people I don't know, looking at things labelled with unpronounceable names which seem quite cheap. Is this what it's like on a cruise? Being taken to a souk by a German woman with a professional smile who holds up an paddle and asks you to follow you in an orderly crocodile. 

I'm here to buy an office chair, but I also quite fancy looking at the sofas. My current sofa is a couple of decades old and has been pummeled by my arse for half that time. It is now the width and colour of a garlic Nan. So, I fantasise about buying a new sofa, especially as I have never bought a sofa. I bought my first mattress last year and the first kettle I've ever paid for a month ago.  It's a wild ride, owning things for the house. I find a peacock green two-seater I like the look of. That'll suit our colour-scheme. Hmm. 

 I head over into the office-ware department to look at the chairs. There are a number of office chairs and they're all pretty rubbish. Ovoid, plastic, like carved out eyeballs on stalks. Probably better for my back than the chair I'm writing this in, but still hardly supportive for my marathon turns at the computer. 

There's a Hollywood writer's strike on at the moment and I'm slightly pleased to say it's affecting my work. I'd quite like to get on with the work as well, but no one wants to be a scabby black-leg. So I won't be doing the truly punishing re-writes for the foreseeable. 

There is one chair I like. It's padded. It has leverage. I can change the height. It's four times as much as  the rest of them. Also, it's the colour of an NHS hearing aid. But I like it anyway. It's so comfortable. I feel held. I scoot around on its castors. Such fun. Hmm. 

We move on through the shop, the endless shop. Into bathrooms. Onto Persian rugs. Beds. The meatball cafe. You have to pass through every part of Ikea and I feel like Jonah in the whale, slowly traveling through it's digestive tract until I reach the obvious destination, at which point I'm pooped out onto the pavement, clutching a lovely piece of very competitive ambergris. 

I buy nothing. Susan has bought nothing. We've spent an hour and a half playing house on Ikea's dollar. We have beaten capitalism. 

I'll be back in the week. I want that chair. My back's killing me.