WHAT Credit Crunch?

Craig had to ref a football match ('soccer' is tantamount to a swear word here: don't use it!) on Saturday somewhere in the nether regions of Milton Keynes with his under 9s roughing it out in the sub-zero afternoon against another larny private school --- while it was suggested I head off to IKEA to see what they had on my "Get That Nursery Finished!!" list.

Parking was a trial for me as I waited and waited for a parking space, my baby girl bouncing vindictively on my poor bladder and my blood sugar screaming out for an orange juice - ANYTHING!!! Rushing inside, I felt a bit Liliputian and lost -- so many people scrambling and hovering around, escalators chock-full, no trolleys, screaming kids, ice-cream eaters. Stepping behind another pregnant female, her eyes as glazed over as mine with nesting hormones, the escalator deposited me in a chaotic vestible where I had too many choices where to go. My stomach decided for me: an expensive but deliciously and incredibly dimuntive bottle of orange juice and an as dear fruit muffin later and I was as ready as I was going to be for a whizz round IKEA with 25GBP to spend on things for Layla Rose's little bedroom.

Through a process of elimination (more putting things back than putting things IN my temptingly spacious trolley) I was able to cross off enough things on my list to make me feel as though I'd achieved a minor miracle! But while I was contemplating the rattan storage boxes, muslin squares for burping and 5 bibs for 1 pound, I couldn't help but feel as if I was drowning in a selfish whirlpool of buy, buy, buy. Fellow customers pushed ahead without so much as a thought for the person trying to get past them in the narrow aisle - the body language like brainwashed automatons: 'buy this and you will feel better'. I had a little aeroplane flying a glaring red banner round and round my head, saying: 'WHAT Credit Crunch?!' It seems as if the gloom and anxiety created by this recession has had the very opposite effect on people's spending habits. Perhaps people aren't buying houses and cars - but they sure as heck don't seem to be curbing their other sorts of spending -- that desperate craving to fill their emptinesses with 'stuff'. (My friend, Andrea, had a post on her blog awhile back on 'BE MORE, DON'T BUY MORE'. I scribbled it on a now curling yellow Post-It to remind me when I sit on the loo (sad but true AND effective!) that it buying stuff is not the answer at all to filling that need for beauty and truth and peace and contentment...

Layla Rose's nursery is testament to this new commandment: there is NOTHING there that is not absolutely necessary. I ask myself: they had babies two hundred years ago without this - so do you really need it, or are you falling for First Time Mommy consumerist ploys? I just wish I had a camera so I could take photos for you to see the transformation from desolate guest room to cosy nursery! But my favourite things in it are the handmade quilt, the beech cot we bought second had for an absolute song - and the antique cupboard I've spent weeks laboriously but lovingly stripping now just needs a lick of pretty paint!