What makes you grin? Antidote to grumpy thread

[rml2345]

Going to Ikea to have a sit down is about the most pleasant thing to do there outside the eatery. Sadly my experience of their products is mixed... Desks seem to be good if easily chipped but their Billy bookcase is crap. Eventually mine suffered complete (and spectacular) structural failure because I had the bare faced audacity to load it with books.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

just for Partridge!!

 

[vulgalour]

Managed to find a Mk1 Xantia grille!  I'm mega excited about this, been looking for one since I got the car.

[saucedoctor]

Going to Ikea to have a sit down is about the most pleasant thing to do there outside the eatery. Sadly my experience of their products is mixed... Desks seem to be good if easily chipped but their Billy bookcase is crap. Eventually mine suffered complete (and spectacular) structural failure because I had the bare faced audacity to load it with books.

 

Is that the one that looks like (and indeed IS) compressed paper?

[forddeliveryboy]

Last night I broke the bed a bit.

 

Went to Ikea today (because I have a Volvo) to purchase a new one.

 

 

Having done so, my girlfriend offered to do so - I would make her dinner in return. Having bought the biggest IKEA bed she could find (this was before tinterntet had taken off and the local papers' classifieds had nothing suitable) the chappy advised her she'd need to add £xxx for delivery. It wouldn't fit in any estate car, he assured her. She told them it would fit in mine - a CX. She rang me with the dimensions, but even though a CX is bigger than the biggest Volvo or Mercedes estate, it looked tight. I asked her why she hadn't just asked them to stick it in the 2cv.

 

She got a few odd looks on the M1 in fog with the roof back, but it managed no bother. I even had to demonstrate to her it actually wouldn't fit in the CX, she thought I was being lazy.

[vulgalour]

I've got some Billys, but they're all crafted from finest chipboard. Shelves are a bit saggy now, but they have survived a house move and being dismantled and rebuilt three times so far.

[rml2345]

Is that the one that looks like (and indeed IS) compressed paper?

I think it was chipboard or something similar. Whatever it was made from it wasn't book supporting standard.

[Cavcraft]

Ikea is hell in a nicely coloured series of packages. Went there once, bought a wardrobe, spent several hours piss-arsing about collecting all the stupid sodding bits and pieces from row Z901 to row A14 (several times over) then got home and realised I'd left some bit out. 

 

Incandescent with rage I 'did a Frank Spencer' and one of the doors wouldn't open or shut as I'd left a hinge out, and the drawers were less accessible than Cameron Diaz's as I'd forgotten them, too. It actually took months for me to go back there again, such is the pain of the place.

Oh, and using Autoshite logic, I went the first time in an Astra hatchback with roofbars for the actual wardrobe, then returned in a Transit van for the small bits I'd forgotten.

 

Verdict: Fuck Ikea, fuck their warehouse.

[dave21478]

 

Verdict: Fuck Ikea, fuck their warehouse.

 

I fully endorse this statement.

 

 

The store layout seems designed specifically to fuck with your senses, like having 75 jiggawatts of lights on display making you sweat buckets as you pass through then straight into the scented candles bit which reeks like a cheap hoors pants....combined with the hot flush I am feeling this makes me want to spew every time.

 

The only one I have been to in UK was in Edinburgh. It was like fucking DisneyLand or something....with its own "Ikea Only" lanes round roundabouts to cope with the consumer horde which must be big enough to have gridlocked the area previously. It also has a really stupid parking system...are they all like this in UK? You park up and go in to buy your chipboard and candles, then come out and find your trolley wont fit past some bollards, so you have to go and get your car and bring it to another separate carpark with about 50 spaces which is for loading only which you can access with your trolley. Fine if you are there with your missus, but what if you were foolish enough to go on your own, are you expected to just leave your trolley full of paid-for flatpack unattended while you get your car and queue up to get into the loading bit? And thats a bloody farce that tests my blood pressure as I wait, watching folks try to park then try to load up their cars..... The one in Toulouse is just a normal deal with a multi-storey carpark you take your trolley out to and load up your car at your leisure.

 

Last time I was there I was so stressed by the whole ordeal that I got a nose bleed. I never get nose bleeds normally but something triggered it. I was sitting eating my bollocks and jam in the cafeteria and it was fucking mobbed with kids running wild everywhere and it was just like turning on a tap....suddenly blood was literally pouring out my snout. Napkins were soon overcome so I tipped out my drink and used the cup to catch it and went to the bogs. I ended up standing with my hands on the wall leaning over the pan and just letting it flow...feck knows how much I lost but when it finally stopped I felt dizzy as hell. I cleaned up and told the Mrs she was on her own and I retreated to the car and went to sleep.

[cms206]

I love Ikea though I suspect I'm in the minority... I now know my way round the one at Braehead, which is ideal 'cos the first time I went I'm pretty sure I went in to Braehead and came out the one in Newcastle.

[Skizzer]

This, from the Grump thread:

 

Last night my self-medication got the better of me, according to ebay apparently I have bought and paid for a set of ex TFL Traffic Lights and set of Pelican Crossing lights. I suppose I could put them at the bottom of the drive so I can get out in the morning, or more probably I shall give them to my brother for Christmas;as  I'm pretty sure they will be something he hasn't already got.

 

I also bought an illuminated Taxi roof sign, a BP gallon measuring jug and inexplicably a CD with sounds from the beach, (Seagulls and wave sounds rather than "Chardonnay get off them rocks and eat your ice-cream)

 

Outstanding effort!  

 

Together with the chopping board polybushing, yesterday was a vintage day in Shiteland.

[Lord Sterling]

I worked at Ikea for a couple of days last year. I had to, on my own, sort out thier 2 storage sheds. One was a properly built metal shed similar to where I store my cars. The other one was a crappy poly-tunnel type affair. It was one of the hottest days of the year and going into there to bring out wood/metal things was like walking into a Sauna.

 

The staff were pretty good, asking if I was Ok and bringing out suncream/very cold cups of water.

 

Then I was asked to work there during thier staff Christmas party. It was one of the worst jobs I'd ever had. Never again.

[Slappy]

I've seen a Vauxhall VXR8 (that's 1 of the Holden ones) being used in Chichester as a taxi. A bit different from the norm. Found it on a forum and it's been LPG'd fortunately for the owner.

 

Not a bad office I guess!

[Mr Livered]

I've seen a Vauxhall VXR8 (that's 1 of the Holden ones) being used in Chichester as a taxi. A bit different from the norm. Found it on a forum and it's been LPG'd fortunately for the owner.

What, just working for a local cab company? So customers who ring for a taxi don't know if they're going to get a diesel Skoda or whatever, or a VXR8?

 

That's fantastic: they could do airport runs and specialise in people who are in danger of missing their plane. I'm having fun imagining a stereotypical taxi driver, with wooden bead seat cover and an air freshener dangling from the rear view mirror, hitting the accelerator and getting to 60mph in under five seconds whilst he tells you about UKIP or whatever.

[Tayne]

You really need to see the French film, Taxi.

[Mr Livered]

Yes, that film is definitely on my "been meaning to watch for ages but for some reason haven't got round to it yet" list.

[320touring]

You really need to see the French film, Taxi.

Ces't super:)

[dollywobbler]

It really is. I need to see it again.

[320touring]

I fear that may be the sum total of what i achieve when i get back to the house..

 

*buys white 406 v6*

[Slappy]

That(/those) 406s and this would make make for a fine garage. And Marion Cotillard.

 

I think he works independently, doesn't have any markings of a local company from what I can tell, but Gatwick and Heathrow really are not that far away, especially in this!

 

Here's the Vaux...Holden in question http://www.hsv.org.uk/topic.asp?p=1&f=69&t=1351456&h=27

[Richard]

 

The store layout seems designed specifically to fuck with your senses, like having 75 jiggawatts of lights on display making you sweat buckets as you pass through then straight into the scented candles bit which reeks like a cheap hoors pants....combined with the hot flush I am feeling this makes me want to spew every time.

 

The only one I have been to in UK was in Edinburgh.

 

I think the Edinburgh branch is grim even by Ikea standards. The restaurant in there was the dirtiest eatery I have ever seen, and I've been to Blackpool.

[Cavcraft]

What's brass and sounds like Tom Jones?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trombones.

 

 

 

*I'll get my coat.

[wuvvum]

Driving in to Norwich this morning to see a man about a garage, I was passed by an old biddy in an immaculate blue locally-registered F-plate Hyundai Stellar.  Then on the way home I passed a middle-aged woman driving a cream-coloured Austin 3 litre.  Not bad for a Friday morning in the arse end of September.

[Vin]

I watched 'Marvellous' last night and it was, well marvellous...bonus shite content too. Beige Volvo 200 series estate, H reg MK3 Cavalier and E reg Metro too..

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04jmx7l/marvellous

[vulgalour]

Billy's joke made me do an actual lol.  Mainly because I could imagine Tom Jones telling it.

[Bren]

I think the Edinburgh branch is grim even by Ikea standards. The restaurant in there was the dirtiest eatery I have ever seen, and I've been to Blackpool.

People travel far and wide to visit Ikea.

 

They buy meatballs.

 

I cannot understand the attraction in buying furniture that looks like it has'nt been finished.

[Timewaster]

The last time I was in ikea I very selflessly and generously helped a particularly fit bird and her mum load up a Trolley with a flat pack Wardrobe.

 

Good deed done, fit bird turns to her mum and in the gobbiest Essex accent yells "Ahma gonna get this in me fakin car?"

 

despite loitering in the car park later I didn't spot them loading up. I'd love to think it was a Ka or a Bini.

I struggled to get one in the Galaxy.

[Inspector Morose]

Driving in to Norwich this morning to see a man about a garage, I was passed by an old biddy in an immaculate blue locally-registered F-plate Hyundai Stellar.  Then on the way home I passed a middle-aged woman driving a cream-coloured Austin 3 litre.  Not bad for a Friday morning in the arse end of September.

Ah, but you missed the multi coloured '86 Metrobus though!

[eddyramrod]

On a whim, I'm looking at car chase clips on YouTube.  I've literally just been watching one that I think must be Russian, with the baddies getting away in a grey pre-facelift Sierra estate, and the cops chasing after them (and keeping up!) in...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...a red Samara!

[catsinthewelder]

I just got a clout off Ms C because she thought I'd arranged this deliberately,