Take A Chance

Someone left an IKEA catalogue in the post box. A postie Patricia possibly, or an Iker direct from IKEA. Whoever it was would have been conspicuous in her or his rectangularity. Everything about IKEA is rectangular, like its brochure, though to be more accurate it is a rectangular cuboid and has the substantiality of a robust chopping board.

I once ventured into an IKEA store. Or rather I was persuaded by the promise of an in-store café. Once inside the aircraft hangar along Hanger Lane, aka part of West London's North Circular Road (that particular part is not circular but linear), the prospect of a coffee from a square cup lost its allure. Marketing may be all, but not when the cafeteria masquerades as a kitchen showroom. The coffee was probably ground from polypropylene. I have an aversion to kitchen showrooms, which is why I avoid entering Genestar in Alcúdia, the facade of which has always intimated that behind it reside aluminium multi-level ovens and rectangular, bleached-white sinks. Maybe I have an aversion to the rectangle as well.

Walking around an IKEA takes several weeks. It is a maze from which there is no obvious escape. One could do with a course in orienteering prior to tackling the IKEA labyrinth, such is the level of disorientation, for within it I experienced serious hyperventilation, induced by a combination of agoraphobia and claustrophobia, surrounded, hemmed in as I was by the unremitting blocks of furniture. IKEA is interior Stonehenge before the erosion set in. Worse still, I experienced an awful desire to want to buy stuff, lots of it. Ocular perception overcame me. Primary colours demanded the attention of my wallet. When finally I did manage to effect my release, I emerged with nothing more than a sweat. Then I rationalised it. I had been subjected to too much information shopping. Soft furnishing overload. No-one buys anything from IKEA because they can't see the table wood for the wall-unit trees. It's like a Chinese restaurant. Hundreds of pages with thousands of dishes, and you end up meekly opting for the set menu. Except in IKEA there is no soft option. Just all that soft furnishing left unbought.

The Swedes, since they stopped being part of the Viking hordes, have carved out a European niche as sensible, well-mannered folk with an overwhelming blondness. They have bequeathed to Mallorca a tourist with generally well-funded pockets, Abba and of course IKEA. Functional and practical. Not two words one commonly associates with anything in Mallorca. IKEA has been home-decoration culture shock to a society that grew up with heavy woods dominating the living-rooms and the sound of woodworm chewing through the chair legs like a slowly churning hand drill.

The vibrant colours aside, IKEA is the Swede made inanimate. The products have a blond vigour, a healthy swim in a pine-encircled lake, the softness yet strength of snow, a pragmatism of line and form. There is air and freshness. From the typical human Swede and the typical Swedish landscape and weather came the philosophy of furniture. Contrast this with the darkness of Mallorcan quasi-antique colossi that compete for every centimetre of space, expressions of olive skin turned burnt ochre by the sun, and of bodily expansion, the result of hefty menus followed by the inertia of siesta.

But they still managed to make the store a pine forest of density. In the desire to extract the optimal benefits of volume, they neglected that very essence of lightness, of airiness. Maybe it's different now. It is some years since the nightmare on the North Circular. I should take another chance on them. Or perhaps you can just phone them up and place an order.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Irene Cara, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTJHjuhCYos. Today's title - Swedish.

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