"Full" English

I don't like shopping on Sundays.  I loathe retail parks.  I'm not setting up my first home on a modest budget.  I don't like light fittings made from paper.  I am the last person that you would expect to see in IKEA.

Anyway.  I am fitting out my study at home.  I've got loads of books around the house plus over a dozen large boxes of books which haven't been opened since I moved house in 2008.  These bookcases will fit perfectly down either side of the room and when they are full of books I think they will look fine.

IKEA was heaving with people.  The car park was full.  There were crying children everywhere (what an unfair and unenviable childhood they are being given by their parents, I thought).  Seriously, I felt like a Fish out of Marillion.

Folk didn't seem to be buying much furniture.  They were just there for the 99p breakfast.

In case that last bit passed you by, I'll tell you again more slowly.  YOU CAN BUY A COOKED BREAKFAST FOR 99p IN IKEA.  

The restaurant was full and people were queuing for half an hour in two seperate weaving lines.  It was like waiting to get on a ride at Alton Towers.  Most people were organised; they had worn elasticated clothes to make sure that they could contain every last calorie.

99p is not enough for a breakfast.  How could you look that slice of bacon in the eye?  Or the egg?  What would you tell its mother knowing that you had only handed over one coin (and, even worse, received a coin back) to commission all of the slaughtering, butchering, carbon-emitting processes involved. I hope that it tasted disgusting (to be fair, it looked disgusting).

We have a minimum wage in the UK, remember.  If you had told my grandfather in 1950 that by the year 2012 one hour's work, after tax, would allow unskilled workers to buy five cooked meals in a restaurant, he would have sold the farm.  I don't care if that makes me sound like a pompous elitist, I'm not.  My grandfather only had 4 acres in 1950.

I suddenly realised that I was standing in a cathedral built to honour capitalism.  Retail parks are the 21st century places of worship and these gluttons in track suits are religious nutters. 

My capitalist belief is as weak, confused and hypocritical as my religious faith.  Just as I can't resist a Christmas carol concert or a church wedding, I wouldn't wait to save the money for my the cabinet maker's quote so I have queued with the extremists to buy a cheap, mass-produced alternative.