That's how to do it!

No pins needed!

A little mouse with clogs on... (not really)

When I was at work I used to take 'eye breaks' as a rest from the computer screen by looking out of the window, watching the birdies. And yes, I used to save up my toast scraps and feed them too.

Luckily the view out of our living room windows is just as idyllic, with lots of trees, vegetable gardens, a pond (though I am very jealous of all the washing lines), and yes, lots of birdies. We get lots of woodpigeons, and lots of little birds.

So we bought a bird feeder that sticks to the window, though it has only been seeing any action in the past couple of days, I think because the weather has become so cold and frosty. At the start of this week I wondered whether maybe the birds didn't actually know what it was, so I started throwing some seeds and bread into the grass and bushes below.

Well, I didn't see any birds, but I did see a mouse! A chunk of bread landed on a holly bush, and a little mouse immediately ran over and started eating it!

Sleep easy

Well, IKEA came up with the wonderous solution of putting the beam half in, and then using a mallet to force the other side into the slot. Riiiight. Of course, if this actually worked (which I doubt, because it is TOO BIG), we'd never ever get it out again when we move. So we've just jammed it in wonky, and it appears to be OK, there aren't any bumps in the bed and - so far (!) - the bed hasn't collapsed.

Always an ulterior motive

IKEA currently have a 20% off all bedframes deal going on - for the next year. Normally IKEA special offers last a week, so why are they so eager to do a good deal on beds?

Well, all was revealed yesterday when we unpacked our new Noresund bed yesterday. Now, for a start the website says it is £72.80, whereas we actually paid about £85, once you factor in the slatted bed base and the mid-beam.

Second, the mid-beam doesn't fit. There are two slots on the bed, and the beam - a Hamar - is supposed to slot into them, but it's too wide. We can rest the beam on the top of the slots - somewhat precarious, or we can jam one side in, but then it's slanted. Or we could file the protruding edges of the beam down and then it would fit.

I know someone with this bed and checked - yep, her beam doesn't fit either. She just jammed it in and so far has had no problems.

Matthew googled for the problem and found a woman whose bed has collapsed twice. Nice. She has a 2 week exchange of calls with IKEA, discovered the correct beam is called Dokka, and has been discontinued. Great. According to this woman lots of IKEAs have stopped selling the bed - no wonder, since most of the people who buy it must be complaining and returning it.

I rang IKEA this morning (tried last night and, after following multiple 'press 5's discovered customer services was 'closed. Please phone back later'. Later when?!) and the woman there deliberately misunderstood my problem ("oh, the beam doesn't fit? That's because it's extendable, you need to pull it out"), claimed she'd never heard of anyone else with the same problem, but then seemed to know all about the other beam and how it had been discontinued. Hmmm.

Apparently IKEA Bristol are going to get back to us at some point, but I imagine that actually we're going to end up filing the beam down and not shopping in IKEA in the near future.

What makes it all the more annoying is that the bed is the pivot around which sorting out the rest of the flat depends. So at the moment everything is chaotic, with boxes and stuff everywhere, because we can't finish things until the bed is sorted.

Grrrrr.