Last month I told of poor Leonard’s falling in a garden rockery and breaking his arm, and the paramedics’ failure to find his house, finally arriving and asking why Leonard’s wife hadn’t told them that they lived in his friend Andrea’s house. I’m pleased to report Leonard has recovered well and is playing drums once again, but received a considerable shock when he asked the landlady to arrange some tree felling and the paramedic turned up to do the job. Maybe Gardening Leave is a standard thing here?
I ventured out of Paphos last week – I’d wanted to purchase three blue rugs from IKEA that I’d seen on their website, just the right colour and size, but every time I looked online, they weren’t in stock. I clicked the ‘Notify me by email when in stock’ button, and a couple of weeks later received an email announcing that the price had been reduced (great!), but investigation showed that there were still none available to purchase. I never received any notification, but a random check last week revealed that, finally, there were some in stock! I tried and tried to order three online, but there simply was no option – no ‘add to basket’ or ‘buy’ button – although there was such under the picture of the red version. Ringing the IKEA helpline, I was informed that while I could order the red ones online, if I wanted blue, I had to order in person. Sigh. OK, but before I set off, can you confirm that you have three of them in stock? No, we have a fault on the system and we can’t see how many. If I call back later can you tell me? No, it’s a permanent system fault.
So, I set off to the IKEA Ordering Centre in Limassol. I found two uniformed staff sitting by computers and asked if I could order three rugs, showing the item on the website on my phone. “You can talk to one of our colleagues” they said, and carried on chatting to each other. I only found one other staff member, and, unsurprisingly, she had a queue. After about 20 minutes, the exhausted but helpful lady confirmed that the blue rugs were in stock in Nicosia, but I couldn’t order them from this Limassol Ordering Centre, because they were blue. I would have to go to Nicosia…I was now halfway there, so, I asked whether she could confirm they had three in stock. “I can try phoning to ask” she said, and did, then informed me that “There are five there now, but they will probably be sold by the time you get there, and we can’t reserve them”.
This was the closest I’d got so far to these elusive blue carpets, so, challenge accepted, I zoomed to the capital (abandoning all thoughts of lunch or other shopping) and grabbed the first uniformed person I found. “Yes, you go to carpet section and take” “But I need them delivered, they are huge.” “Yes, you take on trolley, you pay, and then outside you see delivery company.”. Good news – I found a pile of four rolled up blue carpets hidden behind one hanging on display. So I manhandled them onto a trolley and pushed it through the maze (IKEA is like Jumbo or Stansted Airport, you have no choice but to walk the whole store) , tripping up dozens of innocent customers with my exceptionally long load at every turn, paid the discounted price (yay!) and then found the delivery company outside, who really could have charged me whatever they liked, as by this point I was standing outside in the rain, 150km from home, with three very long rolls of carpet that would never have fitted in my car. Fortunately the company were reasonably priced and helpful, and before long I waved goodbye to my newly acquired rugs and began the long drive back home.
The carpets are now installed in the house, and our cats refuse to walk on them, which is ironic as I’d decided to buy new carpets after our elderly cat, who used to wee on the floor, passed away. Had I known IKEA rugs are cat-repellent, I would have bought some years ago.
