Our younger son is studying at Adam Smith College and rather than just book him a bus and ferry ticket home for the Easter break we thought it might be nice to go down and stay with him for a few days and then bring him back in the car. Since he is now on his own, in a 2 bedroomed flat which we're paying for, it seems to me that the least we can do in return for all that money is stay in the place now and again! Mean? Moi?
Be that as it may we drove down to Fife last Tuesday. We left behind a calm and sunny Orkney and drove into cold, snow capped mountains in the Highlands - not literally, of course, but it was quite a majestic sight. I don't think that I have ever before been unable to tell where the mountain tops end and the clouds begin, it was awesome.
Wednesday we drove round half of Edinburgh to get to IKEA. I don't care what anyone else says I love IKEA. They're thin on the ground in Scotland, although I'm secretly hoping that one day they'll open one in Aberdeen, but until that happens we do without. Or go south.
There were two reasons for going to IKEA, one of which I shared with the OH before we went and one I didn't. The one he knew was that we were looking for new bedside cabinets for use in the holiday flat. You may wonder why we needed to go all the way to Edinburgh for that and not just buy them in Orkney but the reason is that there aren't any small enough in Orkney. It sounds mad I know, but it's true. The space between the twin beds in one bedroom is quite narrow, and the Tourist Board like you to have a cabinet/shelf/table on either side of a double bed and again, because we have quite a large sleigh bed in the double room, space on either side is limited. It took ages to decide on which ones we wanted, there was so much choice, but in the end we managed to get the three we needed, plus a faux sheepskin rug, plus new curtains* for the double room plus a box of Swedish biscuits for J who was feeding the cats while we were away.
*We had measurements but even so there was long and heated discussion about whether or not these curtains would fit. We'll find out tomorrow when we go over to the flat to await delivery of the new sofa. Meanwhile the outcome of the discussion was that if they don't fit, OH is a dead man.
The other reason for visiting was that I was scoping out new furniture for our bedroom which I plan to refurbish next year. I thought it safer not to mention this before we went as it would only have started off another discussion about the furniture we now have and this is a discussion I am bored to snores with already. Like a lot of men, OH doesn't like contemplating change and has a whole range of tactics to deploy in order to avoid it. I'd already ear-marked a couple of styles I liked the look of on the website but wanted to see them in person. And they were both suitable, so let's hope that IKEA doesn't stop making them between now and this time next year.
Getting to and from IKEA took up most of the day and for quite a lot of the rest of it we cleaned. I'm sure this will come as no surprise to other parents of young men living in their first flats away from home.
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