They have a name for everything here. Every time I turn on the TV medical commercials inform me that the reason I keep fidgeting my legs while watching the news is because I have ‘Restless Legs Syndrome’, and that only their medicine can help prevent it (side effects include things way worse than restless legs, let me tell you). You see, I thought it was because I was itching to kick the screen across the living room; obviously not. This pioneer-spirit of naming everything in sight is not exclusive to money-grabbing pharmaceutical companies, however, as I was reminded at the weekend when the wife and I took a trip down to Emeryville, to the Emerald City of home furnishing. Yes, they have IKEA over here too.

They are useful, though, the funny little Swedish names given to everything from sofas (such as EKTORP) to coat-hangers (known in IKEA-world as HEMLIS). I mean, when you go to collect your flat-pack furniture and you are looking for that little black coffee-table, it’s far easier to find if it’s called GRANÅS than just ‘black coffee table’. I imagine the naming ceremonies, two long-chinned pale blond Swedes wearing Sven-Goran frameless glasses sitting in a sauna dishing out names like POÄNG, KRAMFORS and ÅRSTID (arse-what?); perhaps they are the names of all the women they’ve ever slept with, a theory destroyed by the fact there are no futons called ULRIKA and ALAM.

I do like IKEA – or at the least the idea of IKEA – but my own as-yet-unnamed condition reared its ugly mug (or TROFÉ) while drifting around the downstairs ‘market-hall’. You know how IKEA is arranged, it’s the same everywhere: showroom upstairs, with grown adults lounging on beds as if they haven’t seen beds before, market-hall downstairs, crammed with cheap wine-glasses, dish-racks and hungry shoppers with trolleys. I cannot handle the trolley. The trolley is my enemy. Sure, over here they call it the ‘shopping cart’, but it’s still as difficult for me to handle as a bucking bronco. I always seem to be in somebody’s way. I watch helplessly as the trolley-guy marches huge great big lines of them obediently across the store like a cowboy on the plains. With a cold sweat forming, I tell my wife that I have endured enough, that our trip to IKEA world must soon end, or I could lose my mind and be cursed to wandering the crowded Nordic labyrinth for the rest of my days. She smiles, we ditch the wire-caged wheeled demon and go and have some grilled chicken.

But the naming of the world continues. I am sure that my trolley-related illness will eventually show up with a fancy Latin or Greek name, along with a wonder-drug whose side-effects may include an inability to use arms and legs or operate heavy machinery (and you’ll still be able to push a shopping cart?). Here’s a fun game for you – this Friday 13th, call the doctor and ask if he or she has anything to treat ‘paraskevidekatriophobia’. If he does, you might want to consider switching health insurance.