The Nine Circles of Ikea

Flatpack misery awaits all those who enter . . .

DEATH By 1000 Cuts. The Nine Circles of Hell. Being trapped in an elevator with Donald Trump.

All infamous examples of horror and agony by degrees.

But they’re fluffy delights compared with the most appalling ordeal known to man.

Ikea. (Or Death By A Thousand Flatpacks as it’s known in my house).

You enter the First Circle of Ikea long before you descend to the depths of Hell itself.

It begins with the measuring. The eternal measuring. The measuring that gives slightly different results each time. The measuring you know will be wrong no matter how many times you do it and result in you smashing a chest of drawers to matchwood when it doesn’t fit into that alcove in two weeks’ time.

Then, and only then, can your descent truly begin.

I was there recently, to buy a wardrobe for my daughter’s room.

Of course, buying a wardrobe also means buying a bathmat, a picture frame, a kumquat corer, a duvet cover de-fluffer, a set of those things you put in drawers for separating Y-fronts from socks, and 50,000 tealight candles.

The store is a vast confusing warren where arrows point you in directions you don’t want to go in and you keep passing the same desperate, empty-eyed people shuffling around, lost, confused and clutching tiny pencils and paper measuring tapes like comfort blankets.

At one point I discovered a man under a bed who had been living there for six years, surviving on Dime Bars and lingonberry juice.

Some people talk of mythical shortcuts hidden in the kitchen section that allow you to miss out whole departments — like wormholes in the very fabric of time and space — but I don’t believe they really exist.

The only thing that keeps me going during visits to Ikea is the promise of meatballs with jelly. I am rewarded with this when the shopping is over. I keep a crumpled photo of meatballs with jelly in my wallet, to remind me why I’m really there and keep me going when times get tough in the utensil department.

The next stage of the awful descent begins once back home, when the flatpack wardrobe is delivered.

The boxes sit in the hall for a fortnight like a sinister cardboard Stonehenge until one Sunday morning, giddy with bacon rolls and a mild hangover I decide to dismiss my partner’s suggestion/order that we employ a proper man — a man with tools that live in a belt — to build it and launch into the job myself.

Do I read the instructions properly? What kind of man do you take me for?

Man no need instructions. Man make big clothes box using man skills.

It will only take a couple of hours, I tell myself as I happily picture my family’s glowing, proud faces on their return from a yard sale to discover my glorious achievement.

Sadly, what they actually discover is me curled in a foetal position, bare-chested and sobbing, amid scattered piles of screws, cardboard, hinges and the torn remnants of an instruction sheet.

Ten hours later and after some emergency counselling (mainly consisting of being shouted at) I’m nearly finished.

I’ve passed through the remaining seven circles of Hell and have survived . . . just.