Tuesday 18th October

At home in the dining room / lounge

Despite being up during the nigh to watch the storm it was still a fairly early start to the day to clear the water from the patio and more importantly the cushions on the furniture which had acted like giant sponges. The sky was overcast and grey although the temperature warm, quickly rising to the mid 70s.

What to do on a day where sunshine and lounging is not going to be the order for the day?  Its off to IKEA.  Whoppeeeee how I hate going to that store no matter which country it is in.  The drive takes about 40 minutes to the outskirts of Nicosia where the store is situated.  A relatively fast two lane carriageway with sections that are three lane.  A Cyprus motorway although it is called the A2 rather than M2.

We had decided to make the journey to look at and buy furniture for the downstairs bedroom which we are going to set as a study / TV room for the laptop and then television for the winter months.  The reasoning behind this is that everyone says it gets cold in January and February and therefore we will not have to heat the large open planned space for sitting in the evening.  We already have the sofa bed purchased (again IKEA).  So once there we wandered through the lanes of furniture heading for the 'Billy' section, which is the wall units we had decided to purchase.  Of course as you do that you look at other things and start saying 'yes but that will be nice ..... we could'.  Two hours later of deliberations we scrap the 'Billy' idea and move onto 'Besta' as that has a unit that would be better for the television.  But they don't have a the glass doors in stock.  'OK if we change the configuration to this'.  More debate and we are settled.  All in stock.

As we walk through the bed section we see the bed that we wanted for the third bedroom is in stock even though when Lillian phoned the other day she was told that it would not arrive until the end of October!  Great ......... and this mattress?  No sorry 'Out of Stock' but you can have this one at twice the price.  OK, whoever sleeps on it better enjoy it.  IKEA have this huge warehouse wear you physically get the furniture form the shelves and then pay for it putting it in your car or handing back to them for home delivery. 30 Euro to Pervolia.  So we get the bed in 5 bits and the expensive mattress and push it to row 13 to get the wall units which I start to load onto another trolley.  Excuse me?  Where is shelf carcass 800.340.1718?  Errrrr I will check. 'Sorry Sir.  Out of Stock'  ........ but upstairs we were told it was all in stock.  When will it come in?  End of the month?  Yes ...... Urgghhh........ have heard that one before.  Put it all back as not worth having a big gap in the arrangement for what might be clearly some time.

Out through the check out.  Deliver the bed to the right place and arrange delivery.  During our travel through the store we had bought a lamp stand for the lounge.  Where's the bulb?  Not there.  So Lillian has to walk back through the whole store, bad foot and all to get it.  I wasn't going as I had had enough and needed a coffee.  You can see why I hate shopping at IKEA even though it has some good stuff!

On the way home it rained ........ couldn't switch the windscreen wipers on.  Well it was the first time!  A great day.