Back to the groined

Oooooooh it's weird to be back here, wearing a black dress and high heels, perched on my kneeling posture stool in my little glass box, dreaming about huskies and sow-nas and reindeer kebabs. But it's fine. I mentally arrived back in London as the Gatwick Express crossed the Thames late on Sunday night and we saw Albert Bridge lit up to our left - there's certainly a shortage of limitless expanses of frozen lakes round these parts but it's still beautiful.

Yesterday evening, as planned, I hopped in my mother's car and we drove to Ikea. Mum has since revealed that, in her head, she'd thought I might buy a couple of scatter cushions and some candles, so, some four hours later, as we heaved the trollies towards the car, pushing in front of us a large chest of drawers, an oversized full length mirror, a tallish indoor palm tree, a floor lamp and several other items of varying bulk, she tentatively asked how I was going to fit this all on the tube, and I confidently said 'You're driving me home!' as in my head, that had been the plan all along. Note to both of us: relay plans from inside our heads when those plans involve other people.

The personal low point in an otherwise splendid evening was when I was trying to drag the huge mirror onto my wheelie crate thing in the loading area, and the crate wouldn't stay still and the mirror looked like it was going to slide and shatter, and I didn't want to ask Mum for help because I knew she would say the mirror was too big and that it wouldn't fit in her car (which she did indeed say, semi-accurately, a few moments later) so I struggled on my own, holding the trolley with one foot and manoeuvring the mirror with another, resulting in me pulling a muscle in my inner thigh. There are lots of reasons to dread Ikea, but getting a groin injury was not an incident for which I'd prepared myself emotionally. In the end, I forced Mum to drive with the mirror slid along the length of the car and out between the two front seats and the boot tied shut with string, a set-up that was almost certainly illegal but basically fine, and we got back to my flat without traffic dramas - there were verbal exchanges that my dad might have defined as 'a little iffy' but once back home, she phoned me to say that she'd calmed down. Today she admitted that she thought she was at risk of having a stroke but I maintain it is all good exercise.

I assembled the six drawers of my new chest last night between approx. 21:30 and 22:50, and have decided that putting together flat pack furniture is my new favourite thing in the whole world. It is like doing a jigsaw for grown-ups, and you get a new piece of practical home storage as a prize. What's not to like? I have vigorous butterflies about constructing the outer housing but sadly my next free window is on Monday 29th so I will have to quell my winged friends until then. The remainder of this week is firmly back to business as usual, with breakdancing (someone else, not me), ukulele (me and others), real ale (him, not me), a birthday party (theirs, not mine) and a country jaunt in the schedule. Loins are girded. Groins are sensitive.