Ikea

Today - contain your excitement, gentle readers - we went to Ikea with Grandson. We're planning to join the Billy-Bookcase-owning fraternity. We thought we'd get them instead of the previous arrangement of bookshelves screwed to the wall in the soon-to-be-reinstated study, which is going to remain elegant and not become a dump for things we plan to deal with later. Or at least that's the idea. The picture above is actually an unusual one, for it shows Grandson not eating. Eating is normally one of his favourite occupations but he's not been very well recently and he just played with the bits of Danish pastry we offered him. I don't think he's very ill, however, because he's his normal cheery self.

I don't know if Ikeas are the same everywhere (I imagine they are). Anyway, our Ikea has a big display in the children's department of what look like dead rats hanging by their tails. They're cuddly toys, you understand, and possibly they're supposed to be very big mice, but I myself - call me squeamish - wouldn't have hung them up by their tails. It makes me think of Bluebeard's wardrobe, which was one of the very scary fairy tales thought suitable for terrified tots in the 50s and before. Ugh.... . The picture shows some other rats in another part of the shop, crammed into dustbins instead... no, I didn't think that was hugely more tasteful, but Grandson said hello to them anyway. He's very friendly and greets everyone and everything. He hasn't quite worked out yet that saying hello to buses, cars, stones, birds and so on isn't an essential part of British etiquette.

It was a bit blustery. We wrapped him up in a scarf on the way from the store to the car.