Route 79

What you need is the "IKEA Walkthrough" (http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/how_to/the_nonexpert_ikea.php). It'll help you survive the 3D immersive experience which is IKEA.

For a long time, I've believed that there is a viable business to be made from taking online orders for stuff in the IKEA catalogue, going and buying the stuff up in a van and delivering it. Charge a bit extra to cover the labour and van. IKEA don't, as far as I know, do mail-order, and if you want delivery you have to go through the whole purchasing experience and then walk your purchases around to the delivery pickup point.

What is the concept behind IKEA - is it a departmental store. And what is that huge crate of wooden hangars (?) doing there.? I quite didnt get it, even after going through the walkthrough

IKEA sells good basic flat-pack furniture and household bits (from knives and forks to kitchens and wardrobes) at low prices by the "stack it high, sell it cheap" method.

They are notorious for the "shopping experience" which consists of being routed through the entire store, even if you know exactly what you want and where it is, huge queues at the checkouts (due to enormous popularity), and having to drag DIY wardrobes onto a trolley and steer them through the store.

Such expertise! We could learn something here. My wife went off at two on Saturday afternoon to "get a few things from IKEA" - and with strict instructions not to get anything we hadn't agreed upon. She did get back until six. As we'd had a NATO security conference here this weekend and the place was crawling with more police than North Korea, I was worried she'd run a red light or something and got sent off to Camp X-ray. No, it was just the usual queues.

David