Reality is constructed like an ikea flatpack.. and it can change in a moment..

Fleeting visit to this Ikea, Edmonton - it’s closing down.

When it opened seventeen years ago.. there was carnage. Five were left in hospital and hundreds were crushed..

screenshot from a video of Ikea’s opening..

According to the Standard, nine ambulances were sent to the outlet in north London after reports that up to 20 people had suffered heat exhaustion when the opening at midnight descended into chaos.

Staff closed the doors after half an hour amid fears the stampede could become a Hillsborough-style crush.

Security guards said they were put "under siege" by customers who attacked them, leaving one guard with a dislocated jaw.

Now they are again in a frenzy, emptying it of its contents and its mass-produced soul is being stripped away.

The closure of this mega store has strange feelings as we used to bring the children here when they were tiny as we could get cheap food and let them rampage through all the imaginary interiors, which they loved.

Its closure reminds me how reality is not much more than a stage set and it disappears as fast as it’s created.

Ikea with its cheap do-it-yourself kits has finally fallen to bits.

I posted the image of me on Instagram last night and it provoked an outpouring.

So many people have their memories of this megalith - and when they think of it, the store merges with their own lives.

Unlike IKEA our lives have no simple instructions for assembly.. But also what can appear solid, permanent and unassailable - like a megastore, eventually just melts away back into the chaos where it came from.

Perhaps all fear and confusion of the moment we’re living through will soon disappear - and all the systems we have created which are misfiring, can be deconstructed and instead we can choose to build something more fit for purpose. And we will get used to it, and relate to it, and bring our children to play among this new constructed reality.