Personally, I blame the meatballs. If it weren't for the meatballs, none of this would have happened. But we'd got up late, skipped breakfast and by the time we were leaving the house, Bernadette had the bright idea that we could combine the fun of home decor with the functionality of sustenance –specifically, meatballs. So, rather than heading for Homebase, we turned the car (or rather, I turned the car, while Bernadette fiddled with the radio, tuning it to Magic - I hate Magic) in the direction of IKEA.

 

Me, I'd rather have had hot oil dripped onto my bare nipples for 24 hours straight, than pay a visit to that Swedish furniture vault – but when Bernadette gets an idea into her head, there's little you can do to divert or distract her.

               "Did you know that you can get ten meatballs for just £3.90?" she said, cheeks aglow – it was either the thought of cheap meat or Michael Buble that was giving her that after-sex rosy hue. I wouldn't know, as it certainly hadn't been me causing her to look like that of late.

                 "Or you can get fifteen for £4.50. Oh, and I could just die for their Daim Cake! There's real Daim bar in it. I wish we'd had our wedding cake made out of Daim Bar."

                  I was beginning to wish we hadn't had a wedding cake at all. Or a wedding. "They're not doing the Daim Cake any more," I said, noting out of the corner of my eye how her face sort of crumpled. Now that was the look she got after sex with me.

                "You're lying," she said. "You're just saying that to upset me."

                "Nope, it's true. They've withdrawn it. There was shit found in the cake. Look it up if you don't believe me."

                 Bernadette fiddled with her phone and when I heard her gasp, I knew she'd hit pay dirt.

                 "It wasn't exactly, literally shit," she said after a moment. "It was coliform bacteria."

                 "That's found in shit."

                 "But it wasn't actual shit, was it."

                "You say tomato, I say tom-ay-to. But that’s okay.  Next time you get married, you can ask IKEA to make you a nice, not-actual-shit, shit cake. Or maybe Choccywoccydoodah will whip you up another one," I said, recalling how they’d fleeced me for our wedding cake. “Except this time they really can whisk in some real doo-dah. Choccydoggydoodah.”

 

It went quiet for a while after that, which was fine by me. Well, quiet apart from John Mayer singing some song about how big his dick is. Then we hit a wall of traffic. Exactly how I wanted to spend my Saturday afternoon, stuck behind a fume-belching line of cars on the A10. Yeah, this is what life was all about – seizing the chance to acquire more toot for the home you'd hoiked yourself up to the eyeballs in debt for. Because, of course, what we really, really needed was a new television stand, book case, cutlery set and a 'pretty print to go on the upstairs bathroom wall' (Bernadette's pressing need, not mine, just in case you were in any doubt. I couldn't give a fuck what was on the toilet wall when I sat there doing a crap).

 

The thing is, Bernadette and I were sort of playing house, even though we'd been married for six years. We started off in a cheap rental above a row of shops; our lovemaking punctuated by the sound of sirens, accompanied by the waft of deep-fried cod from the chippie below – meanwhile, Bernadette's prone form was bathed in the ambient glow from the signage of the curry house opposite. At first, nothing could quell our ardour, not even Kevin Aseemi's frantic thumping on the bongo drums from the flat above. Sometimes, if we were lucky, he even picked out the rhythm of our own copulation, lending it a somewhat tribal quality.

                Eventually, after many hours of overtime (mine) and much nagging (Bernadette's), we managed to secure a deposit for a home of our own. We had to move further out of London for this –  making my commute to work even longer, but Bernadette didn't seem to mind the bone-shattering exhaustion I was forced to endure. She was, finally, going to be mistress of her own little castle, courtesy of Lloyds TSB (Totally Shit Bankers).

                Unfortunately, home ownership didn't improve Bernadette. As soon as those keys were handed over three months ago, she began to want stuff. Before the big move, our home decor had run to a few pot plants, a charity-shop bookshelf, and a couple of Next throws for the threadbare sofa. Now, it was all Molton Brown handwash in the bathroom and Orla Kiely cushions in the lounge. I don't know much about fashion or interior design but I could see instantly that those were going to go out of vogue in about five minutes; especially when everything else in the shop (from handbags to umbrellas) flaunted the same eyeball-assaulting design. 

                Even more gallingly, the change of venue didn't do anything for our sex life. I had hoped that owning our own little haven would have added a certain frisson – after all, those Yankee candles Bernadette lit everywhere were certainly more enticing than the waft of chip fat. But no, it wasn't to be. Instead, she spent long hours online, searching for things to fill up our house and our life with. Hence the current mission.

                 "I was thinking, maybe we should get a glass display cabinet too," Bernadette said suddenly.

                 "What for? We don't have anything to put in a display cabinet."

                 "Well we can start getting things. IKEA will have some nice knick knacks."

           "Paddy whack, give the dog a bone, this old man buys toot for his home." I sensed, rather than saw, Bernadette pouting. I was focused on overtaking some doddery old fart in a Micra. At least the traffic was moving again.

                 "It's not toot. It's what makes us ... individual," Bernadette said.

            "Yes, I scream out my individuality by buying a Snarteeg Smareg IKEA vase that approximately three hundred other people will also be buying this weekend. Hurry, we must hurry, before they sell out, " I said, applying my foot to the accelerator slightly.

 

 

By the time we eventually arrived at IKEA, Bernadette was in a frosty mood. I spent the best part of ten minutes driving around, trying to find a space. This is what millions of years of evolution has done for mankind – bestowed upon him the ability to sense, at a very instinctive level, when someone is heading for a car so that he might stalk them and attack their newly-vacated space.

                   "Right, let the fun commence," I said, cracking my knuckles and heading gamely towards the entrance.

                   "Food first?" Bernadette hazarded, running to catch up.

                "Oh yes, dearest darling. Food first. We need to get our strength up in case low blood sugar forces us into a rash decision about the bookcase."

                We joined a queue for the lift and edged, cattle-like, into its metal interior as it shot us towards our meatball-y goal. Once inside the brightly lit restaurant, it was easy to tell who had already been around the store and who was yet to rally forth. The yet-to-go people still had hopeful smiles on their faces. The people who'd been around, and were sitting down for a final caffeine-hit before the long drive home, looked as if their life essence had been sucked out of them. There was no more to say or do – other than sit there in quiet contemplation of an evening filled with self-assembly and self-loathing.

                "Oh goody, they do have the meatballs," Bernadette said, jiggling on the balls of her feet. "See," she exclaimed triumphantly. I had hazarded earlier that, after their horse meat debacle, those might be off the menu too. Clearly, although they hadn't had time to get the shit out of their cakes, they'd managed to get the equine element out of their meat.

                We took a tray and joined the queue. It moved slowly, which gave Bernadette ample time to study the dessert alternatives. Her hand moved towards a chocolate mousse. "I wouldn't," I said. "Brown ... good camouflage for, you know ... shit," I whispered. She blanched and set it back on the shelf, choosing a jelly instead. "On your head be it," I murmured cryptically.

                "Why are you being such an arsehole, Phil?" Bernadette asked, her lips pinched together hard in a moue of displeasure which I'd once found cute, but now found unspeakably irritating. Probably because said lips hadn’t been pinched thus round my cock in months.

                "I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm worried about whether we'll find a book shelf and TV stand that match. It's a lot of pressure."

 

 

We sat on colourful little chairs, at a colourful little table, under colourful little lights (all of which could be purchased in-store. Say what you will about IKEA, but they never miss a selling opportunity) and ate our lunch in silence. Around us, children shrieked and cried. Some grown men looked like they were on the verge of shrieking and crying too.

                Afterwards, with the meatballs and their sickly gravy sitting uncomfortably in my stomach, we stacked our own trays away. It was, signs cheerfully informed us, how they kept the cost of the meatballs down. The extra shit in the cakes though was free. Have that one on us, guys.

                "Okay, let's get this show on the road! Let's just buy stuff, Bernadette. Follow the yellow-brick road ... please, after you," I said, gesticulating to a large arrow which pointed the way.

 

I once went into a haunted house attraction at a fairground when I was six. My mum shoved me inside and said she'd meet me at the exit. Ten paces in, I was so scared I wet myself. I turned and began to push past people, back they way I'd come, but the bloke who was running the joint gave me a firm shunt in the back. "Sorry, son - you have to go through. You can't turn back. Keep going please."   That's what IKEA's like. Once you enter it, you can't leave until you've seen everything. Especially if you go with my wife.

                 By the time we finally reached the bookcases, having navigated dining tables, chairs, beds, sofas, kitchens and wardrobes (all of which she'd stopped to study) I fully understood the worthlessness of life; the sheer pointlessness of my existence – and of those around me too. Over there, a balding, middle-aged man was stooping to investigate the opening mechanism of a glass cabinet. It entered my mind, unbidden, that he would soon discover he only had three months left to live; simultaneously, he would realise that the Leksvik buffet cabinet he was about to spend £280 on had added nothing to his existence. Nor had the Billy bookcase or Morvik mirrored wardrobe. If only he could get this time back and go for a bracing walk, or see that friend from school he'd been meaning to hook up with. But he didn't know it, so he continued to feign interest in the fake antique stain and smooth-running drawers.

                "This is definitely the one I want,"  Bernadette said, pointing excitedly towards a £480 BESTÅ TV storage combo.
              "Ooookay. So we won't be needing a bookshelf then."
              Bernadette looked perplexed. "Why not?"
               "Because this has lots of shelves for books. It's got four hundred and eighty quid's worth of shelves."
               "Yes, but that's for ornaments," Bernadette said. "It's a TV stand, with space round it for ornaments. Or DVDs."
               "But we don't have any ornaments. Or not so many that we require 12 large shelves for them."
               "I know we don't have them yet,  but we will. We agreed that we were going to get some today."
               "No, you agreed it. Okay, so we won't need a display cabinet then."
               Bernadette pouted slightly. "I think we still will."
               "And where are we going to put all this?" I said, gesticulating to IKEA at large. "We live in a small three-bed semi. We don't need a TV unit with shelves, a bookcase and a display cabinet. For fuck's sake, can we not just get what we need for what we have at the moment,  which is a TV and your book collection, which consists of Fifty Shades of Grey and Harry Potter?"
               Bernadette began to cry.
 
 
Two hours later, we were close to leaving –  so close I could almost taste it, like I was still tasting those meatballs – but Bernadette had stalled in the homewares department. She was throwing candle holders, vases, prints and photo frames into our trolley as though her life depended on it.
                 "Can we go?" I said, glancing at my watch. "We still have to find all the bits for the cabinets." IKEA teased you in this way. You saw something you wanted, but rather than being able to acquire it immediately, you had to write down a tiny reference number for later, when you were ejected into a hangar-sized warehouse. Once there, you'd have to select every element you needed to build your over-priced MDF monstrosity.
                "A few more minutes," Bernadette whined. "I need to find a doorstop. Preferably in the shape of a large, comical dog made out of corduroy fabric." Okay, she didn't say that last part, but I knew that's what she meant. She'd seen one on TV earlier that week. And what would her life be without an over-sized canine doorstop?  
               Finally, finally, finally. Fucking finally, we made it into the hangar where we spent a further forty minutes trying to find the bits we needed. At one point Bernadette realised she'd noted the number down incorrectly and was on the verge of convincing me to run through the store again to get it. "I think you might need to ..." she began.
              "No!" I screamed, and a few people turned to look at me. "Don't even say it! If you say it, we're through."
               Bernadette's eyes narrowed. "So that's what you think of me? That's how much I mean to you that you wouldn't just nip through the store again to find the number?"
               "Nip? It's taken us almost three hours to get to this point. Some people give birth quicker than this. And with less pain."
               Eventually, I managed to track down an elusive assistant who helped us locate the missing pieces. The way Bernadette beamed at him, you'd have thought he'd helped her discover the building blocks of life itself.
               Of course there was another long queue to pay. The final bill made my eyes water and for a moment I felt like I might have a panic attack. One last wait, while Bernadette found a toilet and relieved her bladder. Then, naturally, a fight over where the car was parked. Deduct another twenty minutes from my life for the time that took.
 
 
Home. A refuge you might think. But oh no. Bernadette wanted her 12-shelf BESTÅ TV stand put up that very night. So, there I was – past midnight with the cabinet only three quarters built and, somewhere along the way, I'd managed to lose a screw. Or the screw was never in there. "Cunt," I screamed. "You utter cunt." Picking up the hammer, I slammed it into the partly-constructed cabinet. Oh, that felt  good. "Have that you shitting load of toss-wood," I bellowed, smacking the hammer down again and again.
                Suddenly I stopped, spying Bernadette in the doorway, pyjama-breathed and sleep-dishevelled. Her eyes widened as she took in her beloved BESTÅ, now lying in pieces on the floor.      

                      "You pig," she yelled. "How could you?"
               I stood there speechless, hammer clasped in my fist. "Well let me tell you," I said, approaching her slowly. "While you were asleep, I was down here trying to put together your precious TV cabinet but I've lost a screw!"
               Bernadette scrunched up her face. "Too right you've lost a fucking screw! You've destroyed my cabinet. I loved that TV cabinet and now I'll never see it completed.  I hate you," she bellowed. "I hate you so much and I don't think I actually ever loved you!"
               "You hate me?" I breathed, creeping towards her as a hot ire filled my chest. "You hate me? You whiny, selfish, boring bitch." Before I could stop myself, I had raised the hammer high over my head and, with a guttural yell, I brought it down, feeling the sweet release of rage flow through my veins.
 
 
So, here you find me. A man contrite. A man who blames meatballs for a chain of events from which there is no going back. Right now, Bernadette's still, silent form lies upstairs on the bed. Meanwhile, I'm frantically beating eggs and crumbling digestive biscuits. Ah, it is almost ready ... now for the piece de resistance.
              Gingerly, I climb the stairs and pop my head round the bedroom door, bracing myself for what I'll find inside – the remnants of a woman I once adored.
               "Something for you," I say.
            Bernadette refuses to look at me at first, lying limply on the duvet. She has a large plaster on her arm where the hammer made contact. "Oh, come on," I say. "Just take a look at what I made you." Her eyes eventually shift over to the plate, unable to resist the temptation. "That's right. It's a Daim Cake. To say I'm sorry."
                  The corners of her mouth turn up slightly. "You made that for me?"
                 "Sure I did." Walking over, I cut off a forkful and spoon it into her mouth.
                "Yum, I'm impressed. You've never made anything like this before."
                "Well, I've never hit out at my wife with a hammer before. I've been forced to take a long, hard look at my life."
              "So does this mean you'll go and get another TV cabinet today?" she asks, reaching out for the plate.
               "Yes, of course. Of course! But only if you come with me. It'll be more fun together. We could even have meatballs again."
              Bernadette grins. "You're on. Just let me finish this and I'll get ready."
 
Whistling, I make my way back downstairs and into the kitchen. Trevor, our Bull Terrier, is sitting there, thumping his tail to some unknown beat. I reach down and give him a pat. "Thanks mate. Your coliform contribution  to the cake won't go unrewarded," I say, tossing him a bone as I stuff the remains of the TV cabinet into a bin bag.
               A giggle escapes, unbidden, as I take one last look around the living room, preparing to shed the accoutrements of married life –  goodbye BESTÅ, ciao Liatorp, adjö Hemnes; it's been a hoot, but I won't miss you.
               I'm just shutting the front door quietly behind me when I hear Bernadette running full pelt towards the toilet. I reckon she'll be in and out of there for a while. But at least she now has a nice butterfly print to keep her company.