Ikea. Oh, Ikea. We shared a beautiful thing once upon a time, didn’t we? You, with your minimalist Swedish design and low-fi production values and me with my lack of money… could there be a more intoxicating meeting of minds?

You made me feel so special… but I see now you made everyone else feel special too, didn’t you? And now, somehow, we all have the same tables. Everywhere I go I see my table over and over again. You sold MY table and MY chairs to anyone who waved their money at you, didn’t you?

It’s not my table these days. It’s the People’s Table. Here it is:

It’s called the Lack table, because it ‘lacks’ anything except essential table-yness. That’s how it all starts, you see. You begin to see Lack tables everywhere and you wonder… what else does ‘everyone’ have? I look up onto walls and I see People’s Art. I look in drawers and cupboards and find People’s Mugs, People’s Crockery and People’s Cutlery. The People’s Sofa Bed and People’s Armchair and that’s when it hits me. That’s when I realise what’s happened, why I don’t love you any more, Ikea.

You used to represent freedom, escape from conformity and the hideosity of Chintz and the horrors of Argos. You liberated us from the tyranny of factory outlets demanding we buy now, pay 6 months later and get the damn thing a year after that.

Yet, ten years later, you’re still selling exactly the same things you were selling back then. Nothing really changes. It’s the same People’s Tables, same People’s Art, the same People’s Sofa Bed.

So now? Now you represent conformity and the old guard.. they’re the fruity ones. If there was a Socialist revolution today, you’d be the only furniture shop still running, and you’d be called the People’s Ikea and we’d all have to queue to get our People’s Bookcase and our People’s Chopping Board and… in many ways, things really wouldn’t be that different. But that’d be it for us. There’d never be a new kind of table. Lack would be the Alpha and Omega of Coffee Tables until we couldn’t take it any more.

Thankfully, mercifully, there isn’t likely to to be a revolution today. And we do, in fact, have a choice. So I’m going to look for another lover now, Ikea. Sure, you sell the perfect, neutral, goes with anything coffee table for the ridiculous price of £7.99 and beating that’s the most mighty challenge faced by anyone in the history of retail EVER. But, brilliantly, the challenge is still on. There’s probably people beavering away in some building somewhere plotting and scheming this very thing. Someone could do it. Someone could make a better table that costs less than that.

Sorry Ikea. It’s not me. It’s you. It’s over. I want to see what else is out there. Let’s still be friends, though eh? I think the leg’s coming off one of my Lack tables and it needs replacing… and I could do with some bulbs while I’m there… and… and..