.UK today

THE MEGA D.I.Y. (do-it-yourself) STORE

It is incredible how some of us Brits get so involved with D.I.Y. "An English man’s castle is his home" they say. Some Brits spend endless hours beautifying their gardens with gnomes or tasteful summer tables with parasols or rearranging (the Brits are always rearranging something at home) all their latest gadgets in a new unit with user-friendly doors and drawers. Or they’re making the best of those little tight corners to store away (in trendy, functional units) those items not used all year round such as torches, Frisbees and Christmas tree lights. And to do all this, the only thing they have to do is jump into the car with their partner and drive to the nearest furniture mega store
–and the UK’s favourite is the Scandinavian chain NIIDEA– the new concept in shopping.

Now let’s imagine, for a moment, that you have recently started
a romantic relationship with somebody new in your life but
you are already having second thoughts about it, well, in fact, you want to finish it as soon as possible but you don’t want to break your lover’s heart. The NIIDEA shopping experience will give you some wonderfully convincing strategies to have a mega row which would doubtlessly cause you to split up immediately.
British men, or perhaps men in general, like to know where they are going. They walk into a shop with one fixed idea. They like to assimilate the necessary information instantly and walk off in search for their object of desire (a screw-driver, a tin of paint, high quality photographic paper for the printer). In NIIDEA, however, you are asked to follow the arrows – simple, isn’t it? What a great idea? Yes, but if you follow the arrows you end up walking in circles at great speed accompanied by hundreds of other hungry shoppers. The result is that you suffer dizziness and nausea and in this semi-conscious state you end up buying things you never thought you wanted or needed.

And that’s the other thing. Buying things in NIIDEA
is not exactly what we normal people would
call "buying." Because when you actually get into the store and past that eternal ghastly smell of fast food, you have the pleasure of picking up your own personal order form along with a nice ethnic-looking pencil that actually smells of wood and charcoal. On this incredibly complex piece of paper you note down the reference numbers of all the things you want to get. Now and again you may find a sad-looking man writing poetry on his order form
–an elegy, perhaps- for his long-lost wife. (One afternoon she had followed the arrows to the highly original, modern bathroom fittings and disappeared and was never seen again).

This is what happened to me on my first and last visit to the mega D.I.Y. store. When I finally decide that it’s time to go home, a nice young lady tells me that I will need to go the basement to pick up my purchases before paying for them at the cash out. "Oh. So they don’t bring them to you?" I innocently ask. "No, they don’t." After going round in circles for another hour and after having countless conversations with total strangers about the best way to get to the basement, I finally find it. Now if you have noted down on your order form that very stylish, refined white wardrobe with the mirror, you will be directed by a member of staff, with a rather sadistic smile on his face, to a long rectangular box. "It’s in there, mate," he says grinning. "Wow," I think. "Scandinavians are so clever: The whole elegant wardrobe in this simple box." As my partner surveys the contents of other shoppers’ trolleys, I happily pick up the box and get an excruciating pain in my lower back. It weighs a bloody ton.

"What you need is one of those trolleys," says a NIIDEA veteran customer. He points to a trolley big enough to fit the whole Barcelona football team plus substitutes and staff plus their 6 trophies from 2009. Now I wish I were Uri Geller, the famous Israeli paranormalist, who just by concentrating, could lift anything. After a great Herculean effort I finally get the bloody wardrobe to the cash desk where the cashier tells me, with another sadistic smile, that the wardrobe I want to buy comes in 2 boxes and that I should go back and get the other one. At this news, my partner tells me that, in the meantime, she will buy 50 coat hangers, 30 whiskey glasses (she doesn’t drink whiskey, does she?) and 28 soup bowls simply because they are on offer.

Pleased with my muscular power, I finally get the boxes and other purchases into the car, though the boxes are a bit too long and go over the driver’s seat so I have to drive home with my neck leaning excessively to the left as if avoiding the guillotine of the "Reign of Terror," that sombre period of French history. My partner and I have loads of time to have arguments about everything on the way home.

Now the boxes are in the bedroom ready to be opened. At last I feel triumphant. I remove the cardboard (with a chainsaw –remember the movie "Texas Chainsaw Massacre”) and take out the instruction manual along with all the plastic bags full of strange-looking screws. I open them and religiously count each one and there is the exact number of each piece– not one more not one less. How clever! I open the instruction booklet and my heart sinks. This is obviously a new concept in minimalist art. God only knows how to interpret these little sexless creatures apparently holding pieces of the wardrobe. This is the last straw and I have yet another row with my partner who has decided that I am a useless, weak, bad-tempered, and vastly immature individual. I am tempted to say that I am not always like this; it’s just the effect that shopping in those bloody evil mega D.I.Y stores that makes me lose control!!!! (I’m sure shopping was easier in the UK when I was a boy).

Vocabulary:
Gnomes: enanitos
Trendy: de moda
To have second thoughts: entrarle a alguien dudas; cambiar de opinión
Ghastly: espantoso; horrendo,
Basement: el sótano.
Grin: sonrisa; sonrisa burlona.
In the meantime: mientras tanto
Chainsaw: motosierra; sierra de cadena