Saturday Date Night

Anyone in a relationship where kids are involved knows the importance of Date Night. We don’t make nearly enough time for this ritual as we should but this weekend we took ourselves off, sans bebe, to that most romantic of destinations…. Ikea!

I guess you could call it multi tasking… spending quality time alone together whilst improving the appearance, functionality and storage capacity of the home!

The news that the most wondrous of all Swedish stores was to open a branch in Southampton this year was met with mixed reviews in our household. Yes it would mean that we only had to travel for forty five minutes before we were able to stock up on church candles, tea lights and other delights but oh, the traffic! If you’ve ever sat in a queue approaching one of the London branches with the bright blue and yellow building colours taunting you from a distance, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

The fact that they were building it right next to West Quay, home of the mother ship John Lewis and other such retail-tastic destinations filled me with something akin to horror. There would be no more quick fix trips on preschool days or family friendly shop trawling Sundays unless we were willing to undergo a one hour traffic jam, eighteen chorus’s of “Are we nearly there yet?” and two parents ready to tear each others heads off!

So with some precision planning, having left enough time for the initial excited flurry of shoppers to fade away, we arranged for MM to have Small Child overnight. Having dropped her off at teatime we fled towards the city, hoping that everyone else would be fleeing in the opposite direction back toward their homes....... already full to the brim with Ikea bits and bobs.

Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together? We glided around the store, holding hands and avoiding the screaming children, seeking out the items on our list. (Never go to Ikea without a list; it’s like going to the supermarket when you’re really hungry… you come out with all kinds of crap that you don’t need.)

High on value for money design and a sense of freedom, we then headed off to seek out pizza on the way home and whilst waiting for a table, actually found ourselves sitting in a bar having a drink on a Saturday night! Right on cue in crept the phrases “How short is her skirt?”, “God I feel old!” and “Small Child is not EVER leaving the house dressed like that!”

Still, a good time was had by all….  so good in fact that Other Half is making a return trip to blue and yellow land tonight after work.  He has to return a chest of drawers that we picked up in the wrong colour – I blame it on all the over excitement!