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‘The Blunderful Everyday’ – a short story of Flatpacked Ineptitude.

Published on May 10, 2023May 10, 2023 by loreleimathiasLeave a comment

‘The Blunderful Everyday’ – a short story of Flatpacked Ineptitude.

Girl buys sofa from @IKEAUK

Girl spends entire bank hol watching an avatar of a lorry drive all over UK, past her road, before it all goes totally absurd. Pls read what happened & RT! @IKEAUKSupport Threadcount 1/10

Hej! Our tale begins on 3rd May: I make ill-advised decision to purchase an ikea corner sofabed. It’s due 7.5.23; between 7am and 7pm. I book a ‘Taskrabbit’ named Jonathan to assemble it as I have #Dyspraxia #ADHD, disc damage and a million writing deadlines.

6 May: I get a text to say my sofa will be with me between 11.11 and 13.14. Hurrah! I let my taskrabbit know; he is super helpful and says he’s free if it does come earlier. I cancel bank hol plans in celebration of the new arrival.

7 May, 11am: I move all the furniture in the flat around to make space so can no longer reach my writing desk but hey it’s only for a few hours! I get a text to say the new time window. I enjoy watching the updates of the little truck avatar, showing me where the driver is on the map of Britain.

3.17pm: Get a text to say my driver is ‘almost there’ and I see from the little avatar that the truck driver is indeed two streets away in Hove! I get ready, move even more of the furniture and crap out the way, feeling smug for being so organised in spite of my usual #ADHD chaos.

3.51pm: I check outside my flat. My Taskrabbit is sat on my steps eating carrots and nuts in the sunshine, but no sign of the truck. I apologise profusely that it’s not here. Jonathan the rabbit says not to worry, he’s enjoying the sun.

4.25pm: Check the app. The truck is now not 2 streets away but is in Burgess Hill. Moments later, he seems to be headed north on the M25… ? The Taskrabbit reason that maybe he’s forgotten the sofa and has nipped back to Ikea to get it? We wait.

4.40pm: Ring Ikea to ask just to check he is going back to the warehouse in Croydon to get it? Or stopping for petrol in sevenoaks? Kelsey assures me he’s definitely still on his way to me. ‘I’m not able to speak to the driver but the system says you are definitely the next drop’.

4.58 pm: Check the app; he’s now stopped in East Grinstead – maybe for a fag break? Start to wonder if I’m losing my mind. Am I seeing things? Is the app gaslighting me? I offer the Jonathan the rabbit a cup of tea.

6pm: Check the app. The truck’s not stopped at Croydon Ikea as we’d thought. He’s way north of there now. I ring Kelsey, she INSISTS he’s definitely still coming. I tell myself you’re overthinking it, it’s fine! You’re going mad! Chill out!

645pm: I check the app. He’s in the Outer Hebrides – presumably gone fishing? I send Jonathan the rabbit home, apologise again, and have a large whiskey.

7pm: I check the app. The driver’s now in Dartford, presumably putting his kids to bed and having a TV dinner? The app still tells me ‘I am the next delivery, due at 13.14’. I press redial. KEELEY (somehow, even less helpful than KELSEY, no mean feat, floors me with her next comment.

KELSEY: Yeah, according to the system, the sofa was never going to be coming to you, I’ve no idea why you were getting updates all day! ME: Astonishing scenes. So what’s the solution?

KEL: Cancel and rebook for another day. I ask to speak to a supervisor. There isn’t one. I have no choice but to rebook for the next slot – 3 days time, and reschedule Jonathan the rabbit. Again.

7am, 10.5.23: Wake up, move everything out the way again. 13.00. No sofa and no text update. Ring up. IKEA: Let me check the system. I wait on hold again for her to contact the delivery department.

IKEA: Yeah – your sofa won’t be arriving today. ME: Why? IKEA: It’s gone missing. ME: What’s has? The booking? The sofa? A crucial part of the driver’s brain? IKEA: We don’t know. We’ll ring you back.

2pm: ME: No one’s rung back. I hit redial. IKEA: you just need to cancel and rebook for another day. I explain I’m ADHD and this has been a clusterf*ck to cope with – as it would be even for a neurotypical person – but for someone with impaired exec functioning and struggles to organise things this is a f*cking nightmare.

I explain I can’t wait home another day tomorrow (thurs) as i have a funeral to attend. Not the death of civilisation as we know it as these events would imply but an actual funeral of a friend. Fern is sympathetic and says leave it with me, she’ll ring me back.

3pm: No phone call from Fern. Instead, an email from IKEA cancelling my order. No explanation. I lie wondering how on earth it is that Ikea have this many stores and this many customers in this many countries when they seem utterly unable to execute deliveries?!

4.10pm: Fern calls back, books a delivery for thursday. ME: Please could you ask the driver to try and come here first? I have a funeral and need to leave by 10.30am… IKEA: The route is mapped out by bots, so no…

ME: Of course. Can you please explain to the bot that I’d rather not have to pop home in between my friend’s funeral and the wake to let in Jonathan the Rabbit? FERN: No but I can try to put a note on the system to make sure the drivers tries to be with you by 10 at the latest.

4.40pm: Thank Fern for her help, have 5th camomile tea of the week and try to calm down, having gone completely insane. Seriously – Why am I continuing to believe the sofa will arrive tomorrow? Do I have Stockholm syndrome? Am I alone in this experience?

17.03pm: Receive text from IKEA: your delivery will be between 7am and 7pm.

18.38: receive text saying it’ll be here between 2 & 6pm – exactly the time of the wake. Ring IKEA to complain, then get cut off. Do I give up?! #TheBlunderfulEveryDay #Ikea #Ickea #FlatpackedHilarity

At time of thread I’ve been offered a £30 goodwill voucher which doesn’t even touch the sides of the time wasted, the gaslighting, and the days of writing time down the drain.

Truly, the absurdity of modern life is boundless. Has anyone else ever been through this staggeringly kafkaesque hellscape when online shopping? Please tell me I’m not alone. Thank you x

#TheBlunderfulEveryDay #Ikea #Ickea #FlatpackedMisery

Neptune has spoken: introducing Rishi Dastidar’s witty & affronting new poetry collection about the climate crisis (essential reading if you enjoyed The Litter Mermaid!)

Published on April 28, 2023April 28, 2023 by loreleimathiasLeave a comment

Earnest post! In celebration of the release of my writing friend Rishi Dastidar’s new poetry collection, which I am honoured and humbled to say, has a whole poem about me and my MermaiDHD in. If you’ll indulge me I want to say a little bit about why it’s oh so special, why the sea is the best meds besides comedy…and why you should check out Rishi’s poetry…

As some of you know, my main life-hack for living with ADHD is swimming in the sea. I can’t reccomend it enough. On land, im a clusterf*ck. But in cold seawater, the 4000 TV monitors and computer tabs, radio channels, mariachi bands and drum and bass night clubs are drowned out and I can hear myself think. It’s such a relief from the cacophony of being on land. It sounds crazy but it really is better than ritalin. When I’m back home looking back at the sea I was just in, I’ve got a new focus: it’s like the water has tunnelled through and ‘torn me a new’ brain, washed my EPFC (emaciated pre-frontal cortex) clean. If you’ve not tried it I recommend it. It’s no surprise they’re linking the benefits of coldwater to helping dementia.

Side note: When I was a little girl I used to be embarassed for having a weird name nobody could say. Lorrellee, Lauraline, Laura-hyphen-lee, still no one can say it first time unless they’ve seen The Gilmore Girls (and then they can’t spell it).

But about 6 years ago I started to embrace being named after a mythical German mermaid, and really lean into the nominative determinism:) Getting a place by the sea, finding my dear tribe of (sorry – dry-robe-wearing) swimming buddies, making films and protest songs about the sea for SAS (see The Litter Mermaid, Under the Pee on our comedy site!), and – most ridiculously of all – being given my very own mermaid’s tale by my dearest best friends who clumped (?) together for my ‘big’ birthday party in 2020.

Rishi, seeing the tail went a step further and wrote this poem which I was moved to tears by – especially as at the time I’d just been made redundant from adland during covid. His sweet little poem made me feel anchored and ‘seen’. I feel a bit embarrassed to post it but after losing one of my swimming friends this week I’m feeling extra sentimental. ‘Mermaid Status’ really does sum up how special the sea is and how grateful I am for all it swept into my life.

The more I’ve leaned into the mermaid, the more my writing has developed too. I’ve got Rishi to thank for that as he’s helping me write my next one. He’s a ‘proper’ writer but he’s always been a fan of my light romantic comedies and been kind to furnish each book with a review in sonnet form!

After a decade of calling Rishi ‘the poet of adland’ (we met at an ad agency in our former lives) I was very proud to attend his launch last night at Foyles Bookshop in London, where he read some aloud. How to sum it up? It is witty, stirring, and apocalyptic – about Neptune and his dismay at humanity. An hilarious and affronting love letter to the sea, you’ll like it if you liked my Melon Comedy sketch The Litter Mermaid – where Neptune was last seen having a nervous breakdown due to the plastic crisis…

TLDR: Do check out ‘NEPTUNE’S PROJECTS’ BY RISHI DASTIDAR, from Nine Arches Press.

And if you live with ADHD and havent tried it yet, what are you waiting for? GET IN THE SEA x

#MERMAIDS #MERMAIDING #MERMAIDHD #COLDWATERSWIMMING #THELITTLEMERMAID #THELITTERMERMAID #ADHDFEELSLIKE #LIFEINADHD #NEURODIVERSEUNIVERSE #TalesFromANeurodiverseUniverse #THESTRUGGLEISREAL #Comedy #Funny #ADHDAwarenessMonth #TeamADHD #NeurodiverseSquad #ADHDInattentive #WomenwithADHD #ADHDWomen #ADHDAwareness #Neurodiversity #adhd #attentiondeficitdisorder #attentiondeficitHyperactivityDisorder #SWIMMING #RISHIDASTIDAR #NEPTUNE #NEPTUNESPROJECTS

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“Your Heart is a Weapon the Size of your Fist. Keep loving, keep fighting, keep writing.” (A sentimental tale of synchronicity)

Published on January 24, 2023February 20, 2023 by loreleimathiasLeave a comment

Most writers have a mantra of some sort. This is the story of mine.

Wise words from the amazing street-artist Charles Uzzell-Edwards of Pure Evil Gallery – and my inspiration for the ‘Break-up Club’ – my latest novel (and now TV Comedy Drama pilot)… Below is the very sentimental tale of serendipity and the kindness of strangers…which I’m sharing one week on as an alternative Valentine’s day message, one week on from 14th Feb…

It was some time in 2009, and I was in the middle of a stinky break-up (along with my BUC comrades). I was walking home through Shoreditch in the dark, wondering if I’d ever love again, and other self-indulgent pangs – when I happened to walk past this street art fly-posted to a brick wall. I didn’t know what it was or where it had come from, but I do know it stopped me in my tracks, and gave me a tiny bolt of hope.

Maybe – just maybe – we’d all be OK. I took this photo of it, stuck it on my noticeboard, and started writing a novel about how break-ups might seem like the worst thing ever, but actually, they make you stronger in ways you could never imagine. I put this quote in the front of book, as I thought it made a great opener. My friend Em was also struck by it, and stuck it up on her wall while she wrote the pilot for her awesome TV series (which would later be sold to ITV).

A year or so later, I was walking round a different part of Shoreditch, not quite sure what to do with myself, having just said good-bye to my darling father at the London Heart Hospital. If you’ve ever been blessed with compassionate leave, then you’ll know it’s a strange sort of numb and fuzzy fortnight where you wander round in the middle of the day while everyone’s at work. You’re not sure what to do with all this spare time, but you’re being fussed over with love and flowers from everyone in a way that feels like a weird inverted birthday and you’re infinitely grateful for it…. but you’d swap it in a heartbeat for one more second with your loved one.

Anyway, there I was, walking the streets in a broken-hearted stupor again, when I passed the same poster. But this time it was a framed print, staring at me through a sheet of glass. The door was open so I wandered in, and started warbling on to the man in the gallery about how much I loved this piece of street-art. For some reason, the man took pity on me (It was probably my bloodshot eyes, or my snotty nose), but I told him all about my dad, my silly book about break-ups, and how this quote had been a kind of torchlight. This lovely man – Charley – he said his name was – reached into one of his really long art drawers, and pulled out an original signed A1 print.

As he handed it to me it felt like another bolt of hope that everything was going to be OK. I didn’t realize then that he was the actual famous artist, who is better known by the moniker of Pure Evil. Stunned by his generosity, I took the print home, and my lovely mum had it beautifully framed.

It then hung in my office next to me while I finished the book – which was no picnic when I was pining for my dad most days, and also still undiagnosed ADHD so struggling with burnout and a complete lack of Creative Satnav, so wasted years getting lost in the woods and going round in plot circles. But eventually I made it to ‘The End’ and got a deal with Harper Collins. like my dad always said, what does not kill you makes you stronger. To be clear, he was channeling the great German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche – not Kelly Clarkson!

It’s true of course. No matter how shitty things get, you always rise again from the rubble, more emotionally toned than before. But this episode also taught me something else – that sometimes the kindness of strangers is that last push you need to pick yourself up and carry on. Like when Holly (my character) is on the bus sobbing her eyes out over Lawrence and a kind old lady gives her her bottle of water. Anyway, I finally finished the novel, and it’s out there! I’m probably making far too big a big deal of this, but I just wanted to write this by way of thank you to Charles – kind stranger, whose brilliant words are still right there in the prologue.

And as a final irony in the tale, when I came over to Venice Beach, LA to celebrate my book being released, and to start work on the screenplay adaptation, Charley himself was over there, having an art gallery opening that same night, streets away from where I was having the book launch… Honestly – serendipity really does make the world go round sometimes!

UPDATE: I wrote about this story a few years ago but now, 6 years later, the TV comedy drama script adaptation I’ve written also has the poster itself in the script!

In the final scene of the pilot script, the main character Holly walks past the poster in the final scene, just as she’s on the threshold of a break-up herself. So far it’s been top 4% of BBC Writers’ Room and the Thousand Films Competition (losing to the amazing Extraordinary! Fair enough!)

The script is currently with a channel being read…. please cross fingers that it gets picked up!

Also, series two is set in Venice Beach… where the Los Angeles franchise of ‘The Break Up Club’ gets going…

Anyway, whether you had a happy Valentine’s Day this year – or a crappy one because you’ve recently loved and lost – don’t lose heart. Keep loving, keep fighting… keep writing 🙂