Visiting Ikea is one of life’s inevitabilities. There’s an Ikea on every inhabited continent, 487 across 63 countries. But Ikea is more than a furniture retailer. Ikea is an idea, an abstraction, a way of life. No other shop has captured the hearts and minds of the public in quite the same way, at least not in the UK. Argos is a fate worse than purgatory; Woolworths has gone to the great retailer in the sky; John Lewis is for the Chelsea tractor drivers among us; WH Smith is only bearable when you’re at an airport, and their drinks taste like they’ve been stored in lukewarm bathwater; and Curry’s is selling AI fridges (I don’t want an AI fridge, thank you – I’ve seen 2001: A Space Odyssey ; I know how this ends.)

Ikea is there for us at every major turning point in our lives. It is life

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