Swedish Meatballs With a Side of “Can We Go Now?”

I love IKEA. A trip to IKEA is a proper day out. Usually it’s a once-every-couple-of-years affair, which somehow makes it feel even more special. It’s the sort of place that deserves proper footwear, a fully charged phone and a good four or five hours of your undivided attention. So when I hear someone casually tossing, “We could always go to IKEA,” into conversation… I launch myself at the idea like a seagull diving on a fallen chip. “Yes.” “Absolutely.” “Let’s go.” I’m already mentally halfway through the showroom before we’ve even left the house. The thing about IKEA is that I don’t really go there to shop. I go there to imagine. I’m one of those tragic souls who wanders through every perfectly staged room, pretending I’m furnishing the enormous Scandinavian log cabin my husband and I will eventually own… …just as soon as we win the lottery we never actually play. I can see it so clearly. A huge open-plan kitchen with an island in the middle where we’ll eat breakfast every morning, mugs warming our hands while we talk about our plans for the day. A wall-to-wall library with rolling ladders, cosy recliners, mood lighting and enough books to make people think we’re well-read individuals. Blankets draped over sofas. Plants in every corner. Candles that smell faintly of cedarwood and impossible levels of financial stability. I don’t simply walk through IKEA. I move into every room for approximately forty-three seconds. Sinking into chairs. Stroking cushions. Opening drawers. Admiring lamps I’ll never buy. Picking up little ceramic ornaments and wondering where they’d live. Meanwhile… My husband is treating the place like he’s late for a hostage exchange. Every thirty seconds he glances at his watch. “Come on.” “Keep moving.” “Let’s press on.” Press on? To where? We’ve literally got nowhere better to be. We’re not catching a flight. We’re wandering around fake living rooms named after Swedish villages. Every few moments, something else catches my eye. “Ooh…” I pause to admire a lamp. Or a ridiculously overpriced basket. Or yet another cushion I absolutely don’t need. I look up. “Mat?” Silence. He’s vanished. Again. Somehow he’s already five showrooms ahead of me, marching purposefully towards the exit like IKEA is slowly filling with toxic gas. I practically have to jog to catch him. I’ve missed an entire pretend bedroom. A study. Two bathrooms. Possibly a kitchen. This is not how IKEA is meant to be experienced. I could happily spend an entire day here. Slowly taking everything in. Mat, however, has only one destination in mind. It’s waiting on the other side of… The checkout. Thankfully… One thing manages to stop him in his tracks. The restaurant. His eyes practically light up. “You can’t come to IKEA and not have Swedish meatballs.” Well… You can. I have. Repeatedly. I’ve never actually tried them. They look… too… meatbally. Instead, I play it safe. The menu isn’t exactly Michelin-starred. You can have Swedish meatballs. Or Swedish meatballs. Or some mysterious chicken dish that tastes suspiciously like every school dinner from the late nineties. Chicken schnitzel. Peas. Chips. And sparkling water. Because apparently we’re really pushing the boat out today. We sit down. I’m unusually quiet. Mat notices. “What’s wrong, Mandy?” I sigh. “I feel like I’m in a relay race.” He laughs. “I’m serious.” “All I wanted to do was look at the cushions.” “We don’t need cushions.” “They weren’t on the list.” That bloody list. I swear, if he mentions the list one more time, I’ll fold it into a paper aeroplane and launch it somewhere highly uncomfortable. “You can never have too many cushions,” I argue. “Mandy…” “There are so many cushions on our sofa, there’s barely room for actual people.” Annoyingly… He has a point. I do like things. Pretty things. Quirky things. Things that make a house feel loved. Things that make our home feel like ours. He stirs his food thoughtfully. Then, quietly, says, “Sometimes it doesn’t really feel like my home.” I blink. “It’s just…” He searches for the words. “…full of your stuff.” That catches me completely off guard. I hadn’t really thought about it. Over the years, I’ve slowly accumulated rugs. Pictures. Candles. Plants. Throws. Lanterns. Baskets. Little decorative mushrooms for reasons I can no longer explain. None of it happened overnight. It arrived one lovely little purchase at a time until, somehow, our house looked like Pinterest had exploded. “I hate those rugs.” Bloody hell. That one lands right in my jugular. I didn’t choose those rugs. Those rugs chose me. “What’s wrong with my rugs?” “It’s not just the rugs.” He gestures vaguely. “It’s the whole bloody house.” I stare at him. “It needs a makeover.” My heart sinks. I’ve poured blood, sweat and tears into every room. Hours spent painting. Decorating. Filling Pinterest boards with ideas. Trying to recreate impossible photographs I’d found online. Every room has been built with love. Every little detail was chosen because it made me smile. I thought I’d done a bloody good job. To be fair… Mat has always been wonderfully supportive. Well… Mostly. Apart from what shall forever be known as the Great Hallway Incident. I’d spent an entire day painting the hallway a rich forest green. Finished. Stood back. Admired my masterpiece. Mat wandered in. “Oh…” He paused. “You’re not keeping it that colour, are you?” Excuse me? I’ve literally just finished. The following day, the hallway became beige. Lovely. Safe. Impossible to offend anybody. He nodded with approval. I sighed with defeat. Because, despite everything… I do care what Mat thinks. This is his home too. He just doesn’t get quite as ridiculously excited about home improvements as I do. By the time we reach the marketplace, I’m feeling… mildly irritable. Bless him, he really is trying. He starts picking things up. “How about this for the dining room?” I slowly turn to look. It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. It looks like something a haunted dentist might hang in a waiting room. I don’t even answer. Apparently my face has already delivered a full PowerPoint presentation. A few minutes later… “Ooh… what about this?” This time it’s an enormous metal fish wearing what appears to be a waistcoat. I honestly can’t tell if he’s joking anymore. Either he’s deliberately trying to provoke me… …or he’s secretly been decorating imaginary houses in Minecraft. Honestly, it’s impossible to tell. Eventually we reach the self-checkouts. Mat transforms into an Olympic athlete. Beep. Beep. Beep. He’s scanning so quickly I can barely get things into bags. Honestly, I’m half expecting Dale Winton to burst through the automatic doors yelling, “Congratulations! You’ve won Supermarket Sweep!” Before I know it… It’s over. Everything’s loaded into the trolley. We’re heading back to the car. “Well,” I say, pushing the trolley towards the boot. “That was enjoyable.” The sarcasm hangs in the air. Mat smiles. “I thought it was.” And that’s the funny thing about marriage. Sometimes you’re not actually having the same day. One person is wandering slowly through imaginary futures, dreaming about libraries, log cabins and cushions they’ll never buy. The other is simply trying to tick off a shopping list before lunchtime. Neither of us is wrong. We’re just travelling through the same places at completely different speeds. Perhaps that’s what love really is. Not finding someone who walks exactly like you… …but learning, every now and then, to slow down… or speed up… so neither of you gets left five showrooms behind.