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Saturday, 28 March 2015

Posts of Few Words #3

IKEA!  What a maze... There are poor wanderers in there who have been lost for days, living off frozen köttbullar (the famous IKEA meatballs).  I believe köttbullar is simply Swedish for "spherical processed meat product"; odd, that they don't give them an IKEA-style name (PÜKI, perhaps, or PLOPS).

I read somewhere that people have started arranging IKEA hide-and-seek games, which sounds like madness to me.  I have always thought that hide-and-seek sets up two of the loneliest experiences in a child's life: as the seeker, left alone at the start of the game with everyone else hiding, and as the last hider, who fears he or she may never be found!

IKEA blue

IKEA pink

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5 comments:

  1. Gustaf Erikson28 March 2015 at 18:20

    Heh!

    In Swedish, "kötbullar" really means meatballs, or rather, "meat buns".

    Most IKEA produkt names are Swedish place names (Karlstad) or Christian names (Jerker). Some are generic Swedish words (Kajuta). Maybe there's a specific theme (cities for couches) but I avoid IKEA like the plague and haven't been able to divine one.

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  2. Mike C.28 March 2015 at 18:24

    Thanks, Gustaf, good to get that cleared up, especially the IKEA-style names -- never occurred to me that "BILLY" might be a place! (I have several BILLY bookcases right next to me...)

    Mike

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  3. Richard28 March 2015 at 19:01

    I only know IKEA Leeds but it is not really a maze -- there are shortcuts between departments so you don't have to follow the herd.

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  4. Martyn Cornell28 March 2015 at 19:20

    Ah, the Billy bookcase: there are probably more Billy bookcases in Britain than people. We have at least five: one day it will transpire that they are all really the chrysalises of aliens from Alpha Centauri, waiting for global warming to make the temperature on Earth more like that of their home planet: when that hour arrives they will emerge and enslave us …

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  5. Mike C.28 March 2015 at 19:37

    Martyn,

    Only if someone's remembered to bring the right allen key and a rubber mallet...

    Mike

    ReplyDelete

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