The Up escalator at Tooting Bec

I know many stories about the escalators at Tooting Bec tube station. Significant things happen at those escalators; if they didn't I doubt I would believe in Tooting Bec tube station magic. The escalators are the key to the magic.

I'm moving to my new home on Wednesday. I feel stressed and busy. I'm working Tuesday, and I'm out on Tuesday evening too, so today and Monday are vital 'getting things done' days. I have lots of important 'getting things done' things to do. I need to meet sofa upholsterers to get rid of moth-eaten sofas, I need to talk to house-clearance people about losing blue fridge-freezers, I have ladders to find, and lofts to fill when I can get to them, I have TVs to carry so Sky TV installers can install Sky, I also need to get boxes so I can finally begin packing two houses-worth of stuff.

I also still need to buy a bed. Steve and I didn't get to Ikea on Friday night as he got held up at work - a need to schmooze with Andy Black. I was lucky he managed to escape with a compromise deal of drinks but no dinner. So I got to see Steve later than planned on Friday. We didn't do Ikea ice cream, instead we stayed in with greasy pizza, and watched a colleague/new friend play poker on TV. We were in bed by 11pm.

So I went to Ikea today with Amy. I eventually found the bed section, rebelliously ignoring the trolley one-way system. I found a bed I liked and so I went to the warehouse to collect it. I'd thought that once you'd chosen your bed it would simply be a matter of collecting a flatpack box with the correct silly Swedish bed name on it. But no! My bed was in 4 boxes with silly Swedish names written on them - and each box was located in a different aisle in the warehouse.

I needed to buy a mattress too, a double mattress. Ikea claim they keep their prices low by getting their customers to do some of the work. I respect this idea, I took my own tray back in the cafe, and considered that my bean salad was only £1.99. But surely special tools and lifting equipment are needed to manoeuvre a double bed mattress onto a checkout counter? A double mattress is no bean salad!

I tried my best to get the double mattress onto the not-big-enough-trolley, but I had two boxes of bed there already and it wouldn't balance on top of these. So then I struggled to get the mattress back on the shelf, and decided to come back for it later. Then I went to get the third heavy box of my bed in aisle 73 section 13. I finally found the section of the store where the third section of my bed frame should be - but it was empty. There were no 140cm Hemnes Headboard/Footboards where the 140cm Hemnes Headboard/Footboards should be! It turned out that the bed had been in stock when I'd checked, but the solitary 140cm Hemnes Headboard/Footboard they'd had in-store had been taken by another customer. It was a two week wait until the next delivery.

I was forced to put back the boxes I'd loaded onto my trolley already. These I dumped in a random aisle, on a random shelf. Someone may well get a surprise when they assemble their new coffee table.... But those boxes were heavy, and annoying, and I didn't want them any more. Also I felt like saying 'poop' to Ikea's crappy warehouse system! I came home bedless and more stressed about moving things-to-do than before. I spent a wasted afternoon in Croyden, I don't fully understand the Wimbledon tram system, and I didn't even get to try the ice cream that Steve recommended.

I did buy some useful things at least. I bought 2 big blue storage boxes for Amy's toys. At the checkout I packed several things I'd bought into a big blue box.

Close to the top of the Up escalator at Tooting Bec I looked for my travel card. I balanced the Ikea box on my knee, as I reached into my pocket... I dropped the big box and all the Ikea goodies spilled out, and went rolling down the escalator. The big blue storage boxes both banged and crashed their way down, clattering all the way to the bottom. The other stuff bounced around on the escalator as I tried to walk down the Up escalator to pick it all up. There was a picture frame, a table cloth, a night-light for Amy, a cat place mat, some lightshades... Walking down the Up escalator wasn't a very good plan. In the end I stopped trying to pick everything up, just let the escalator carry me and my belongings upward.

At the top of the escalator everything rolled off and then it was very easy to pick it all up. A few kind people helped me. A young man arrived carrying the boxes he'd found at the bottom of the escalator. 'At least it wasn't you falling down there!' he said.

I put everything back in the boxes, and nothing was broken,I headed home. It had felt like quite a trauma, but then it wasn't.

I think the escalator was trying to tell me something.