They have a name for everything here. Every time I turn on the TV medical commercials inform me that the reason I keep fidgeting my legs while watching the news is because I have ‘Restless Legs Syndrome’, and that only their medicine can help prevent it (side effects include things way worse than restless legs, let me tell you). You see, I thought it was because I was itching to kick the screen across the living room; obviously not. This pioneer-spirit of naming everything in sight is not exclusive to money-grabbing pharmaceutical companies, however, as I was reminded at the weekend when the wife and I took a trip down to Emeryville, to the ffice:smarttags" /> They are useful, though, the funny little Swedish names given to everything from sofas (such as EKTORP) to coat-hangers (known in IKEA-world as HEMLIS). I mean, when you go to collect your flat-pack furniture and you are looking for that little black coffee-table, it’s far easier to find if it’s called GRANÅS than just ‘black coffee table’. I imagine the naming ceremonies, two long-chinned pale blond Swedes wearing Sven-Goran frameless glasses sitting in a sauna dishing out names like POÄNG, KRAMFORS and ÅRSTID (arse-what?); perhaps they are the names of all the women they’ve ever slept with, a theory destroyed by the fact there are no futons called ULRIKA and ALAM. I do like IKEA – or at the least the idea of IKEA – but my own as-yet-unnamed condition reared its ugly mug (or TROFÉ) while drifting around the downstairs ‘market-hall’. You know how IKEA is arranged, it’s the same everywhere: showroom upstairs, with grown adults lounging on beds as if they haven’t seen beds before, market-hall downstairs, crammed with cheap wine-glasses, dish-racks and hungry shoppers with trolleys. I cannot handle the trolley. The trolley is my enemy. Sure, over here they call it the ‘shopping cart’, but it’s still as difficult for me to handle as a bucking bronco. I always seem to be in somebody’s way. I watch helplessly as the trolley-guy marches huge great big lines of them obediently across the store like a cowboy on the plains. With a cold sweat forming, I tell my wife that I have endured enough, that our trip to IKEA world must soon end, or I could lose my mind and be cursed to wandering the crowded Nordic labyrinth for the rest of my days. She smiles, we ditch the wire-caged wheeled demon and go and have some grilled chicken. But the naming of the world continues. I am sure that my trolley-related illness will eventually show up with a fancy Latin or Greek name, along with a wonder-drug whose side-effects may include an inability to use arms and legs or operate heavy machinery (and you’ll still be able to push a shopping cart?). Here’s a fun game for you – this Friday 13th, call the doctor and ask if he or she has anything to treat ‘paraskevidekatriophobia’. If he does, you might want to consider switching health insurance.
Week Fifteen: Trolley 1, Pete 0
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10.1.06 20:57
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