Flatpack heaven
I CAN'T tell you how often I have wanted to say: “Excuse me, sir, I can’t help noticing that you have bought some flatpack furniture: would you like me to come round your home and assemble it for you?”
Sitting in the car park of Ikea, snooping on my neighbours in the queue at Homebase, I feel a pang of envy every time I see someone buying some flatpack furniture.
Perhaps that sounds a little strange to you. Perhaps you associate flatpack furniture with misery and frustration, your dreams of a nice bedside cabinet crumbling to dust because the assembly instructions are in Norwegian and you can’t find all the screws.
But not me.
I was born to assemble wardrobes packaged in slim cardboard boxes using nothing more than an Allen key, a selection of screwdrivers and my innate animal cunning.
I love flatpack furniture because it allows me the illusion that I am handy. Like most men who work in offices, I have to rely on men in overalls to do all of the jobs around the house that are traditionally associated with manliness.
The men in overalls know this and do nothing to assuage my sense of impotence when they come round to take over.
With flatpack, it is different. From the point that I run my Stanley knife down the side of the packaging to the moment when I stand back and admire my finished furniture, I am every bit a man as them.
I have taken raw materials and fashioned an item for my house – behold my masculine genius!
“Well done, Whitters,” says Mrs Whitters (the tone in her voice just betraying how much of her life is spent wearily celebrating my tiny triumphs).
I can get away with this guff because as well as the men in overalls and the flatpack lovers like me, there is a third group of people in society: those who can’t even put together a set of drawers at all.
To this group of untermensch, the basic work of putting together a few bits of wood to make a frame for an armchair is on a par with that Big Bang thingy in Switzerland. They look at flatpack furniture and despair.
To them, I can offer no comfort except this: I will come round your house and put together your flatpack furniture.
