the third time the swede caught sight of us, according to deborah, he had to look again, just to make sure. i didn’t notice; my attention was on the daim cake.

he had first seen us four hours earlier. we had worked our way through the magical maze that is the ikea showroom, and had arrived at the cafeteria, only an hour and a bit into the adventure; we had a modest haul of wooden cutlery caddy (to double up as pencil organiser), teddy bear bedlinen and two notebooks. it was still early, as lunchtimes go, but i figured if we ate early then there’d be an opportunity for afternoon tea later. we joined the queue and filled our trays. organic apple-guava juice, salmon with chips and vegetables for me, organic apple-guava juice, meatballs and chips, herby bread roll for deb. potato salad and beets to share.

“can we have chips and vegetables with the meatballs?” asked deb as the efficient lunch ladies plated up.

“no.” said the efficient lunch ladies.

i suppose we had already taken up too much of their time deciding if we should get ten meatballs, or fifteen. we were going to split everything, but lurking in the back of my head is the awareness that there can be too many meatballs. even if meatballs have been the main drawcard for a long-overdue ikea excursion.

it only seems like i have too much spare space in my brain, for lurking.

the swede, you remember, from the start of this story, checked us out., by which i mean, at the checkout. “ah!” he exclaimed, on spotting the pink juices, “this is organic apple and guava juice! it is new.” he seemed pleased that we had chosen so wisely.

and then a long and leisurely lunch, where i discovered a couple of the carrots had a strange frosty appearance, even though they were perfectly… room temperature. despite being hard and crunchy, they had an un-carrotlike texture. i was flummoxed, and then in spite of that, i decided that ikea should launch a string of ikea cafés around town — no furniture or curtains on show, just a refurbished mcdonald’s with cheap meatballs and salmon meals behind the counter, and a room full of coloured plastic balls for the kids. you would go, wouldn’t you?

it only seems like i have too much spare space in my brain, for lurking.

and then a long and winding wander through the downstairs maze of the market hall, where our restraint from upstairs was gradually undone. damn you, kitchen department! but we got through it. we even sat down on a saggy, discounted sofa in the bargain basement and reviewed our loot. one of us, not me, even put stuff back on the shelf. we joined a short queue and paid. and then we came face to face with the ikeafood(c) store.

sigh.

at least i had known ahead of time, had not pretended that the rows of swedish jams and cordials and ginger thins would not move me. too soon a shopping bag — “the taste of sweden” — was filled with cloudberry jam and blueberry jam and lingonberry jam, a single daim bar, a bag of salty licorice fish (for the boy; i shall not touch the stuff again), a bag of dillchips — and this is where the swede bumped into us again. “ah, these chips are really good! but i like these ones better,” he said, pointing to the american style sour cream and onion. but, ch, you can get sour cream and onion potato chips anywhere. dill-flavoured chips are hard to come by.

remember, in greece, all those oregano-flavoured potato chips you ate, not because they were so delicious, but because, where else will you come across these exotic crispies?

things that didn’t make the bag this time: creamed crab in a tube (30% crab meat!), gingerbread house kit, instant meatball sauce powder. as it was, the magical display of pulling rabbits out of this hat was quite a sight to behold, this show i put on at the checkout counter.

we were pleased, but wilty. the girl on welcome duty at the foot of the escalator looked confused as we rode back up; we were already weighed down with sweden’s best. back in the cafetaria, we sat beneath jaunty polka-dotted lamps and ate cake and drank tea. that’s when the swede did the double take. we’d been there about five hours. by the time the last crumb had been eaten, we’d have nudged it closer to six.

the feeling we had on realising it, i do not think that you could call it pride.

but it wasn’t bad.