The one where I bought a shopping trolley...

We've been to IKEA - and I enjoyed it. It seems wrong to be typing that phrase, but there you have it. It was not as much fun as the time I went to IKEA with O and my three pregnant friends and we played in the little rooms, pretended to cook, lolled about on weirdly shaped chairs and generally lived the Swedish existence of our dreams.
The only thing that could have made it more jolly would have been Kurt Wallender popping up in the bedroom looking crumpled and careworn. The treasured memories of that particular trip were my friend putting on one of the IKEA bathrobes in the bathroom and telling everyone to get out as she was going to have a bath and the my other friend lying on a futon bed and being unable to get back up again as she was so pregnant. It took three of us to roll her off it. (She had her baby boy three days later).

Today's trip was one where we planned to buy lamps, but as we all know, the IKEA trip is never truly focused. It normally means filling a trolley with vaguely useful but peripheral items that you would not normally purchase, all done under the disapproving gaze of one's other half. I was well prepared for this and ignored M's rolled eyes as I danced like a child through the market place. I duly bought a brace of glass storage jars, vases, flowers, a toy snake, a lamp, a small ironing board and.....a shopping trolley.

Please - don't stop reading in disgust. I was so torn about purchasing the shopping trolley. I am a young (ish) woman, yet the trolley called to me like a siren with its promise of easy wheeling and cavernous shopping space.

I live in a village with a big hill. It's a real old slog up that hill to the local supermarket and since being ill, I've chickened out and gone up in the car if I need anything. I kid myself that the main reason is not being allowed to carry heavy bags on my left side due to the surgery I had. I do not want to have the lymphoedema - I passionately fear the lymphoedema and will do anything to avoid it, although lately I have given in and do the ironing and the vacuuming when the clothes pile is toppling and the carpet is thick with debris.

However, the real reason I drive up the road is more to do with laziness than anything else. I need to get moving again - Slimming World alone will not shift the post-breast cancer blobbage (that one's for English Mum who once questioned whether that was a medical term). My plan is that I will use the trolley to wheel my goods from the local supermarket down the big hill and benefit from the bracing walk up and down said hill.

The test will be next week. Will I have the courage to venture out in public with my trolley? Will the local youths subject me to a barrage of abuse as I enter the supermarket? Will my friends refuse to be seen with me again? Will O beg me to return the trolley to the porch and start taking Flash Fabia up t'hill once more? I shall report back after the maiden voyage of my trolley. It will be a momentous day!