Ikea turned 80 this year and it's time for our festive visit - Gaby Soutar

If only I'd known about Ikea’s birthday sooner, I could’ve baked them a kladdkaka.They opened their first British store in Warrington in 1987, and there are now 21 in the UK, though only three in Scotland - Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, where they have a collection point. It seems apt to pay tribute to the octogenarian brand - whose first mail-order business was started in Älmhult, Småland, back in 1943 - at this time of year. For some reason, it seems to have become a Christmas tradition in my household to make an annual pilgrimage to their Edinburgh store, which caused much excitement when it opened back in 1999.

I’m not the only one who associates the shop with festivities.

Earlier this week, the shop offered free Christmas dinner in its Edinburgh room sets, and they quickly sold out of all the sittings.

In mid-winter, the blue and yellow building calls to me, like the blue tits on our bird table. Come, see our hygge Vinterfint collection, it says, and I must obey.

My plan is always to get a few small pressies, and maybe a new bath mat, lingonberry jam, LED lights, a pot plant, or red and white baubles.

Sounds simple, but it’s always a mission. Usually, I find the experience rather overwhelming.

It’s a bit like caving. Once you’re in, you can only move in a single direction, so you start to panic.

Apparently, Ikea’s have an average of 3.5km from the entrance to the checkout. There are shortcuts, but they involve burrowing and climbing through hatches, before it all becomes a bit reminiscent of the film Being John Malkovich.

I enter with enthusiasm, which begins to fade somewhere around the lighting section. Also, storage, who cares? Bo-ring. I am much more of a marketplace person. You can never have too many useless ornaments.

There have been times, shortly after moving house, say, when we’ve bought bigger, more grown-up items. Then things really get difficult. The protocol involves locating a member of staff in a yellow shirt, with “Hej!” written on the back. They give you the tiniest pencil you’ve ever seen, so you can jot down your desired item’s exact coordinates in the warehouse. (You think you’ve returned that writing instrument, but you’ll find it in a pocket, two years later). Squid Game The Challenge has nothing on this.

In the bedding area, there’s always an errant child bouncing on a mattress.

It’s here that I will often think about crawling under the Silvertopp covers, and telling them to go on without me.

“I’ll only slow you down,” I say.

The lights are awfully bright, but I could always put a Balsampoppel on my head. Then someone from the warehouse could bring up one of the oversized trolleys and wheel me into the carpark at closing time.

Apparently, a snowstorm in Denmark back in 2021 trapped customers in a branch, and they had to sleep over. That’d be okay. It’s better than being stuck in Wickes or Lidl.

I don’t really want to pass through Ikea’s kids section, kitchen, or bathroom room sets, but go there you must.

If you get hypoglycemia, the restaurant appears like an oasis half way through, just when you’re starting to hallucinate meatballs.

At the start, I’ll usually have picked up one of those big blue Frakta carrier bags. A cushion will go in, then a soft toy, maybe a plant, then, as I pass the restaurant and approach the tills, I will slowly decant them.

I’ll think, “Why am I here?”, then get a hotdog and go home.

I can’t count myself as a true fan.

There are members of my family from Moray, who will hire a van and take the four and a half hour journey to Edinburgh to ‘see us’.

Then they’ll disappear off to the store for the day, and return with a packed vehicle. It’s not a chore. They have a jolly old time.

Their homes are pure Ikea, and nothing else. Mine is a mixed bag, though the Scandinavian shop's influence is inescapable.

Where else would I buy my homeware? Loaf, John Lewis and Sofology are for those on a higher wage bracket. I used to love Habitat, but they’ve been consigned to online and have just three English stores.

Now that I’m working-from-home, and, thus, forever indoors, I have taken a swift audit of my Ikea belongings.

Just like everyone, there’s a tin that contains all the Alan keys that have come with flatpack furniture deliveries over the years.

Despite that, we’re one of the few who don’t have a Billy bookcase, which was designed in 1977. They say that one is sold somewhere in the world every five seconds.

There’s no popular Pax wardrobe system in our house, either. However, we have an entire Ikea kitchen, a sofa, armchair and a bed.

The latter is great, though we got the mattress there too, and it was like sleeping on a rocky outcrop of the Cuillins. We wanted to get our money’s worth, so we endured it for five long years. There’s the red Poäng footstool that I detest, but it remains nonetheless. All our rugs are Ikea. My most prized purchase is a shelving system, which they launched as a collaboration with Danish design house, Hay.

We have quite a few of their cushions. They’re unexciting though, so these soft furnishings were lucky to make it as far as the checkout.

Maybe I’ll get better ones on my annual visit. If not, a hotdog will do.