The last Billy

This must be the place ...

What could be more difficult than following the assembly instructions of an IKEA Billy bookcase? Tab A into Slot B - as the excellent movie review team at BBC Radio Five Lives 'Wittertainment' programme often reminds us for no particularly solid reason. (It is the best two hours of informed discussion and reviews you are ever likely to come across by the way. Download the podcast. It has spellbinding extra features).

Buying a Billy bookcase from IKEA in Canberra. 

That's what could be more difficult. Although I confess, for the sake of dramatic effect I have exaggerated the degree of construction difficulty. You don't even need to be able to read - look at the drawings, screw in the screws, locate all the noodly bits you've lost on the floor, insert the shelves, slide the completed bookcase into its place. Easy. Mind you, I'm paralysed from the chest down so Spike does assembly. I observe and resist the temptation to mansplain how simple it is or give advice.

But Jeez - buying the last unit we needed to complete our book nook? It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.

This is a sad, short tale of not very much human suffering. We were in the store last Friday. The App insisted there were 40cm-wide cases in the 'market hall'. Nope. A helpful IKEA person said they were likely to be on a pallet somewhere back of house. They would be on the shelves from 9:00 a.m. Saturday morning. We'd already lost four hours of our lives wandering the IKEA road to Hell - following their illuminated arrows pointing to corporate good intentions. So we left.

We returned on Tuesday because the App insisted there were 40cm-wide Billy bookcases on the shelves in the market hall. Another hour wandering the pilgrim's way to the slough of despond. Nope. Sold out over the weekend apparently. We ran screaming from the building... bearing an IVER unit we had not been looking to purchase for the kitchen . But you can't leave empty handed, can you?

We returned today because the App and a human being said, 'yep - on the shelves in the market hall'. I elected to stay in the car because - to be frank - dying of heat exhaustion in a sun-baked IKEA car park was preferable to another hike around IKEA's path to the underworld. Spike, fortunately, is more clever than I am. She took the short cut via the canteen with its infinite supply of Swedish meatballs before returning, some hours later ... OK forty minutes ... with the slim bookcase to complete our set.

I will bet you good money the Library at Alexandria took less time to construct than our suburban idyll. Next time, we'll just leave the damn books piled on the floor where they do no one harm.