Ja, jag vill leva, jag vill dö i Norden

So my weekend followed the pattern of most weekends of recent times, drive three hours to get home on Friday afternoon with Great Intentions of becoming Super Youthful Dirty Stop Out Wild Thing and then collapsing into sleep, exhausted at 10pm (now you see why there are all those posts about being terrified I am making the wrong life decisions - I don't have enough waking hours to change my mind about any of them). Saturday morning I wake up at 7.30, furious that I have lost the ability to stay asleep until mid-day; get up, go to Ikea, have a panic attack, am forced to leave the store, have another panic attack when I realise I can't find the exit and that is the fourth time I have walked, at speed, past that lamp, and how the fuck do you get out of this psuedo swedish hellhole? left the store, catalogue in hand, scribbled with what looks like aramaic, now where is the bloody car?

I don't understand panic attacks, I never used to have them and I have to admit to being slightly contemptuous of those who complained of them. You know the sort; 'Well there I was in the shower and all of a sudden - Panic Attack!'.
Sorry what? Was this shower in Baghdad? What exactly was the panic about? You live in the midlands, what excitement is there to panic about?
Then I had one, in the middle of Tesco, trying to buy wine for a BBQ. All of a sudden in the dog food aisle (and I don't actuallly have a dog so make of that what you will) a fog came down over my brain, I got incredibly hot and I panicked, there is no other word for it, there were too many people in the superstore and I don't know what I thought was going to happen but I dropped the basket, ran out of the store and went home, no wine, no nothing.
Now these attacks are not regular by any means, my life is not paralysed by the fear of having one, I am not writing in to 'Pick Me Up' magazine in the vain hope of winning £300 and being pictured, miserable, in front of a caravan; but every so often, usually in Ikea, there it is. Swedes have a lot to answer for.

The story of Saturday will some later.................