The Ikea Catalogue and its Discontents

Anyway, there she was: standing there, naked and ready….

Oh, hang on, now that I come to think about it, maybe it was over there, next to the table… or was it there, next to the okapi – as you probably know it is so easy to get the table and okapi confused, what with the hectic daily lives we all lead nowadays.

Anyway, I remember because she was holding the new Ikea catalogue in what she hoped was a provocative manner….

As an aside: she did discover some time ago, that the only way to get my attention – especially when I’m busy contemplating the eternal verities with my eyes shut (and definitely NOT snoring – whatever she claims) is to cough discretely while standing there naked. Admittedly, it does tend to raise a few questions in Tesco – but then as I often say to her: ‘you can’t have everything’, especially not when naked as you do not have anywhere near enough pockets.

Anyway, as I was saying about the nudity….

Actually, I perhaps ought to mention about the Ikea catalogue. Normally, I won’t go near the place as it outrages and frustrates the male approach to shopping, based around the commando raid: get in, do what you have to do and get out as quickly as possible with the minimum amount of casualties – especially to the wallet.

Hence the nudity….

Because she knows after however many years of happy (sic) marriage it has been, that the only way I find that shop and its catalogue interesting is through the use of nudity. Maybe it is something their marketing department should look into; after all, Scandinavians are rather partial to getting their kit off, if those magazines we saw back in the school playground all those years ago were to be believed.

We Long for a Sign

It could have been a moment that took time in its grasp and turned everything back on itself; a time when time itself began again. Each moment hangs there, waiting and we wait too, as though expecting something, some sign to show us which way to turn.

These days though, there is not much left of the roads; sometimes they disappear altogether merging with the grass and the undergrowth. So when we come to a crossroads like this, there is no sign, no indication of which way leads where. It is then that time begins again. Each new turning is a new life, a new possibility, a chance for change and happenstance to take all we have and all we have known and replace it with something new.

We travel on, searching for some sign that goes beyond mere direction. We long for a sign that points towards the lives we have lost, left behind, long before each crossroads became a new beginning. We search for those lives we used to have before the disaster, before the catastrophe.

Each of us, deep down knows that there is no route, no road, that will lead us back, back beyond all these turnings we have taken, to our old lives, back to how it was before. Yet, even deeper down, there is a longing for those familiarities, those certainties, of the old life that even now we have trouble recalling or even naming to ourselves. We just hope that the next crossroads we stumble upon will be the one that has a sign pointing back to those old lives and a road to take us back there.

Distinctly Indistinct

It was distinctly indistinct in a way the left everyone who thought they saw it absolutely positive about its haziness. Those who saw it were absolutely certain that it was so simply indescribable in the complexity of its simplicity, while those who had no idea about it wondered – often at great length – what all the fuss was about.

The fact that all the fuss was about the way its exactness could only be described in vague general terms while its precise details were plain for all to see, but not recount, meant that for those who knew nothing of it, they knew even less when they heard of it and the problems everyone who had seen it had in describing the thing itself.

Obviously enough, the exact dimensions of the thing itself were not very precise due to the uncertainty about where it began and ended and where the surroundings around it came up to. There were places where it was both – obviously – there and – at the same time – obviously not there, both of which were only explainable in precise general terms.

Of course, there came a time when it was not there, although there are still arguments to this day about exactly when it suddenly wasn’t there. There are even some who still visit the place where it was – and now isn’t – claiming that it is still there, but those of us unenlightened by its visit cannot see it. There are those of us though who doubt it was ever actually there at all, just that there were some who wanted it to be there, but even then they lacked the belief to make it certain, to make it solid… and in the end the uncertainty won out.

For Whom the Whistle Blows

Well, if only she’d realised, then perhaps the unfortunate incident with the Member of Parliament and the elk could have been quietly forgotten about and we could have all gone about our business none the wiser.

However, she saw it as her duty to bring the matter to the attention of a public eager to salivate over the untoward doings of our elected representatives, especially when involving inappropriate conduct with wildlife. After all, everyone remembers the media feeding frenzy when the Undersecretary of State for Cabinet Meeting Biscuit Procurement was discovered in his local branch of Ikea with a zebra who later turned out not to be his wife. As for that local government councillor and the walrus, well… we all know about how that ended.

Anyway, the woman – who shall remain nameless, even though everyone knows she is Henrietta Shagruff – heiress to the title of Lady-in-Waiting to the third-in-line-to-the throne’s Official Trollop, a close personal friend of the elk in question.

Consequently, we can only hope that the MP resigns as soon as possible in order to prevent further embarrassment to a political party already languishing in the polls, with a leader less popular than some of the more disfiguring tropical fungal diseases, and that politics in this country can go back to being the usual tedious and inept farce we have come to expect from our political class.

You are My Lord

Her hair was across my chest, she lifted her head and tucked the hair away, behind her and then rested her head against my chest. The skin of her face felt cool against me, possibly even damp.

She could have been crying.

‘My husband is dead,’ she said simply.

‘Yes,’ I agreed.

‘You killed him.’

It was not a question, but I answered it anyway. ‘Yes.’

Her hand stroked across my chest, a finger running along the scar that cut across it. I could se little more than the outline of her head in the low glow and flickering shadows cast by the fire, which was the only illumination in the room.

‘You are my husband now,’ she said, kissing my chest.

‘Yes.’ I agreed.

‘I am your wife.’

‘Hmmm….’ I said as she kissed more. ‘You are my lady, now. To me you are my wife; to everyone else you are Your Ladyship.’

‘You are my Lord,’ she muttered, her kisses moving down my stomach as her hand tightened its grip as her kisses moved lower. Her hand began to move slowly up and down as her mouth kissed down to meet it. ‘You are my Lord,’ she said, then she said no more as her tongue and lips became too busy to comment.

This Year of Great British Sporting Success Continues

Even though there were plenty of reasons not to, she – as is her wont – insisted. So, I had no option but to pick the freshest of the watermelons and don my flippers in readiness.

She approached – at speed – from the north end of the bedroom, taking a firm grasp on my already-proffered shuttlecock as she made her third lap of the bed, which already had the Norwegian judge marking her down for her unorthodox use of the gardening wellies.

Still, we managed to just scrape through the first round against a very strong German couple who did things with sauerkraut and lederhosen that would make a TV celebrity blush.

After our convincing win over the Belgian couple in the next round, the press began speculating on our chances of not only reaching the finals (the first time for a British team since the heyday of the 1970s squad), but that we could even beat the reigning World Champion Dutch team who did that thing with a whole Edam cheese that is the most frequently-streamed clip on YouTube as well as now being a best-selling computer game.

However, first, though, we have to beat the Italians in the semi—finals next weekend, where they will be doing their best to dazzle the judges with their use of bondage linguini. We hope you will all be there to support us in our efforts to continue this year of great British sporting success.

Accidental Invasions

It was not that obvious at first sight, which is odd when you consider the size of the average bulldozer. But, she had one of those smiles that tend to light up your life, and one of those low-cut tops that somehow seem to rewrite the laws of gravity.

Still, as she said, it was obviously a complete accident that she had both illegally appropriated the aforesaid bulldozer, and then – purely by chance – driven it across her neighbour’s back garden, totally destroying an allegedly over-large hedgerow that had been the cause of some friction between the neighbouring households, including some desultory small-arms fire.

However, the investigating police officers dismissed the neighbour’s suggestion that this assault by bulldozer was an attempted invasion and dismissed his claim that his bulldozer-stealing neighbour had planted a flag of occupation in his rockery, and planned to build defensive trenches and a machine-gun next in an area adjacent to his water feature.

However, following an in-depth investigation of the bulldozer driver over tea and homemade scones, which the lady in question insisted on buttering for the officers whilst leaning over their proffered plates in her gravity-defying top, those officers decided that no further action should be taken and that the neighbour himself should be put under surveillance as a suspected terrorist.