Some Days

What a day! First up it was off to the supermarket to shop. That was 7:30am! 7:30am on a Saturday. Tescos is a strange place at 7:30am on any day, but on a Saturday it's possibly an even stranger place to be. What was impressive was the well dressed older couple who were coming out as we went in. By implication this means that they had been in the shop for at least 30 minutes. Jacket and tie, well polished shoes, cleanly shaved. Had I entered Stepford?

The whole reason for this early excursion to the temple of groceries was the need to get started on the day. There was a lot ahead of us. At 9:30 we were expecting some folks from a new church plant to arrive to rearrange the church for tomorrow morning. Chairs were to be moved and tables introduced to give a cafe style feel. This is the great thing about having taken out the pews all that time ago, moveable seats.

I made my simple requirements known-no one to end up sitting with their backs to the platform ( no desire to give anyone a twisted spine)-and left them to it. We will see what everyone makes of it tomorrow, including me!

Next we got our things together to go to Upminster via Lakeside and Ikea. The Ikea experience, for those uninitiated in such things, goes something like this:

1. Arrive at Ikea and park and set off in search for the entrance.

2. Climb a series of staircases to get to the showroom and begin to wander through the store slavishly following the arrows on the floor.

3. Get bored and try and cut through to the bit you want only to end up in lighting three times without knowing how you got there, or how to get back!

4. Eventually find the wardrobes you want to look at and decide if you really like them.

5. Choose the one you know is in stock because you checked the website before setting off.

6. Find a member of staff because you want the tall ones (only to discover that this is irrelevant because you don't get any more help, just a neatly printed list of all the things you could have written down yourself).

7. Set off on the winding walk to the stairs that take you back downstairs to the warehouse.

8. Optional step: change your mind about getting the tall wardrobes and hope the shorter ones are in roughly the same place as the tall ones because you didn't write down which aisle and bay they were in. (Actually that was my suggestion, so don't think it was anyone else's fault)

9. Get to the location to discover everything the website said was in stock isn't, but that everything it said wasn't in stock actually is!

10. Realise that nothing appears to be where it is supposed to be. When it says that the carcass you want is in the rack below the label, it actually means wander up and down the aisle until you find it by chance.

11. Push overloaded trolley to the tills as if it's a small child intent on wandering to the left or the right but persistently refusing to go in anything that resembles a straight line.

12. Pay.

13. Head for the doors whilst the trolley heads off in a different direction, requiring constant pulling and twisting to hold in check.

14. Load the car and the roof rack and the roof rack of the wonderful person who has volunteered to help and possibly wishes that they'd eaten more spinach the day before because those boxes are heavy to lift onto the top of the two cars and there are five of them!

15. Set off in convoy only to get separated by a Volvo who is taking the same route but appears to have learnt to drive on a slalom course. Must be all that snow in Sweden.

16. Catch each other up only to meet the Volvo again.

17. Make it to the house and unload and carry all boxes and doors and assorted bits upstairs.

18. Sweat profusely because you've chosen the warmest day to do this, you can't open any windows and you're wearing jeans!

19. Put down the last box and wonder if you've brought a big enough roll of paper towel to dry yourself off if you go and stand in the bath and turn the shower on!

20. Gratefully accept the kind offer of a cold drink and a sit down.

Well that was our Ikea experience, but the day didn't end there. We drove from Upminster to Saffron Walden to see Anne's parents and have a meal with them. They'd ordered Chinese takeaway (good thing we had Indian last night then!).

These visits usually involve solving some computer related problem and discussing replacement boilers. With computer sorted and boiler discussed, with optional conversation about the house wiring, we set off home.

Arrive home ready for bed but aware that I've forgotten to print the notices but deciding to leave that until tomorrow. There will be plenty of time in the morning!!

Write a blogpost because you are too tired to do anything else. So ends the day. It's been a lot of driving but a lot of fun too.