BoldBelvoir's Grumpy Owd Twat Blog

I’m 52 in a couple of week’s time and, up until last Sunday, I was very proud to say I was an Ikea virgin. Yep, I had managed OK, thank you very much, without going to Ikea all of my life.

However, last weekend I was persuaded that there was something there ‘we needed’, so I couldn’t get out of  it. Now our nearest Ikea store is  advertised as being in Nottingham. It’s not. It is about 8 miles away and closer to Kimberley. It is in the middle of nowhere, close to the arsehole of the universe, which unfortunately isn’t indicated on SatNav.

So I drove for about an hour in 27 degrees of heat, which was nice, and eventually arrived, complete with sweaty scrotum, at the vast, characterless hanger that was ‘Ikea’. But, despite the outward appearance, once I was inside, I loved it! By that, I mean I FUCKING HATED IT! Masses of people wandering around (you all have to walk in the same direction, following the arrows) like mindless sheep, all looking at cheaply-made tat that they have been persuaded is fashionable or indispensible and then queueing up for hours to pay for it.

I almost panicked when we couldn’t find the exit. It was a bit like that episode of Father Ted where they get lost in the lingerie section of the clothes shop. When we finally found the door, there was a loading bay the size of  Terminal 5 at Heathrow. Hoards of people loading boxes and boxes of  god-knows-what into cars and vans like ants tending to the Queen’s eggs. I stumbled out of there into the sunlight, gasping for breath. And we didn’t even buy anything.

I considered keeping this sordid episode to myself, but I knew someone would find out. So I decided to ‘fess up here. I am not proud of this episode, dear readers. My Ikea cherry has been popped.

I went to the dentist for a check-up today. There’s a clock on the wall of the surgery and I noted the length of time I was sat in the dentist’s chair. It was just 63 seconds.

Back at the reception, I was asked for £16.50. Sixteen chuffin’ fifty. That equates to £942.86 an hour! No wonder the dentist had a grin on his friggin’ face.

Although not basically funny, I can’t help seeing the lighter side of the search for the now infamous Raoul Moat. Half the UK’s police force, the SAS and ‘specialists’ from other countries have been looking for this one bloke for just over a week now without success. But they did find his tent.

I can’t help likening the situation with the scene from Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’ where the a dozen or so Legionnaires search the PFJ’s HQ, only to find a spoon.

…I am mostly being… Grumpy.

• People who just use a fork to eat with and cut their food up with the edge of it. No – that’s what a knife is for. Use the fucker.
• Peeling eggs – the original wrap rage?
• Shoppers who buy margarine because it tastes just like butter. Buy friggin’ butter then!
• Drivers who buy a SatNav and then ignore them because they ‘know a better way’. Why didn’t you keep that couple of hundred quid in your pocket then, because ‘it’s cheaper?’
• Legwarmers. What the hell are they all about?
• People who drink out of bottles. Another uncouth American-led habit. Use a glass, you fuckin’ slob.
• Gok Wan. Twat.

“Me time” – Usually accompanied by doing quotation marks in the air with fingers.

Well, it’s a bit complicated. but this terrorist wanted to blow someone up who was in hospital. So he gets into the building wearing a bomb vest, but he’s sussed by the good guys and they transmit a blocking signal so he can’t explodipate himself with it’s trigger. Should have been a wired system mate – much more reliable.

Anyway, plan foiled, they chase each other Benny Hill style around the hospital and the baddy corners himself into a pressure chamber which he locks himself into to give him time to rewire the vest, enabling him to explodipate himself manually so the cops can’t take him alive. I told you it was complicated. Wake up and keep with it.

So, they estimate they’ve got maybe twenty minutes to get into the chamber before he’s able to blow himself up. It’s 1″ thick steel, but they can’t drill through in time. Ooooh – what to do?

Well, this is where my training as a pressure vessel designer comes in.  Simply by adjusting the pressure and/or gas mixture in the chamber, they could have rendered the bady unconcious in less than five minutes.  Nobody in the hospital or any of those clever FBI bods thought of it. They should have rung me.