Denis: Turn the other cheek at Ikea

Jun 16 2009 By Denis Kilcommons

WOMEN come from another planet. This is a widely-held view that was confirmed to me after losing my wife in IKEA while choosing frames for my Picassos. Like you do.

I have ordered four Picasso portraits of women. Not the daft ones with ears on their elbows and eyes sticking out the top of their heads, but Blue Nude and three black and white line drawings including Femme (which is a bottom in three strokes).

I’m getting them from an internet company and they are destined for the walls in our newly-refurbished bedroom.

They are all done in the best possible taste but, no, I don’t think they will be originals.

Mind you, it would be nice if they slipped up and sent me a real one, considering Boy With A Pipe went for £63m. And that was a boy with a pipe, not nearly as interesting as a bottom.

"Eh, Harry? Do you know where we put Femme by Picasso? The one we were using to make copies from? You didn’t, did you? To that bloke in Yorkshire? Do you think he’ll send it back if we ask him nicely?"

Anyway, there I was choosing the frames and my wife, Maria, wandered off. Eventually I got the right sizes and stacked them in my trolley and turned round to look for her. Nowhere in sight. Other chaps will recognise the feeling.

I stood around for 10 minutes until a couple of IKEA employees who were discussing a new display started looking at me funny as if I was hanging around to bother young women.

I nonchalantly wandered into the basket and plant section. But no, she wasn’t there either so I returned to the art department.

More hanging about, more strange looks, this time from young women who didn’t want to be bothered and I headed in the other direction, but still no sight of her.

Where could she be?