The pre-university shop is the moment you find out how much domestic wisdom you’ve managed to impart. In my case, none
I have yet again found my ultimate tribe in a high-street shop, this time Ikea. As far as the eye could see, there were middle-aged women trying to choose kitchen essentials for their late-teenaged sons, for whom the next chapter of life, in which they move to another city and never once use a kitchen, cannot commence fast enough. I don’t know where all the girls were – did they do it all online? Have they been collecting teapots for years, as part of a wistful university trousseau?
The negotiation started with a chopping board, which my son said he absolutely did not need or want. I said, “How are you going to chop vegetables?”, and he said he would cross that bridge when he came to it, and I said: “Oh my God, you’re going to get scurvy.” Behind me a woman and her son were arguing about whether or not he needed a cheese grater, which ended in her saying: “I think you might be about to starve.”
