Fancy having a big, fat La-Z-Boy in your sitting-room for the World Cup this summer? But worried by what your snooty architect neighbours would think of you buying a "Rialto" recliner?
Furniture etiquette, imported from perfidious you-know-where, is a social minefield with endless potential for gaffes. First there was that awful U and Non-U business of "sofa" or "settee" from arch-snob Nancy Mitford. Then along came Alan Clark, Tory MP and celebrated diarist, who cruelly dismissed Michael Heseltine's prime ministerial ambitions with the observation that he was the kind of man "who bought his own furniture".
"How's your new house coming along" ask friends, stifling yawns. There is no subject more obsessively interesting and greedily time-consuming for the proud new owner. And none more boring for the smug, "settled" community. All eyelids except your own begin to droop as you regale company with the difficulty of tracking down the "right" dining table or locating the "perfect" little bookcase to fill that wasted space in the alcove.
Tastes in home furnishings have changed considerably since De Valera's Ireland when the ideal homestead was rustic and preferably located in a valley near Slievenamon. A mid-20th-century Rural Reader for Irish Schools taught children, even urchins from inner-city slums, that "the spacious, whitewashed kitchen of the typical Irish farmhouse is beautiful and picturesque [quite unlike, it noted coolly, "town" kitchens] with a long old settle under the back window and strong hand-made chairs of ash with bottoms cunningly woven in rushes or in hempen cord, and backs slanting at exactly the right angle which yields perfect comfort". Who needed Habitat? Especially when the "menfolk" could make not only the chairs, but also "the table, the presses, [and] the dresser with its proud array of old delft, pewter and lustre jugs".
Bedrooms had distempered walls - though dairy-farmers could stretch to bordered wallpaper - a Narnia-style wardrobe, a dressing-table big enough for the cast of La Cage aux Folles and the kind of brass bed in which Maureen O'Hara made a quiet man of John Wayne.
We've come a long way since that vale of tears and now most Irish people live in cities or large towns. Woodwork has dropped way down the school curriculum and a good cabinet-maker these days is more likely to have learnt his trade in Warsaw rather than Waterford.
So off we flock to huge "out-of-town" stores with TV studio lighting and football-pitch-sized floor displays of aspirational rooms. A single chair can cost €1,000 - but who's worried about the price? Consumers are spending like there's jam today and quince jelly tomorrow.
There is such a wealth of choice and colour and design - with each more tempting than the last. Suede and chrome, marble and butter-soft Italian leather; king-size "teak" beds and delightful little Art Deco, Eileen Gray tables to hold your Martini glass. Furniture "ranges" (the word "suite" is strictly verboten these days) all seem to be named after exotic places - "The Luxor", or "The Barcelona", or "The Milano". But you never see a sofa called "The Minsk" or an armchair called "The Pyongyang". And just wait till Ikea opens and every single item has a dinky Swedish name - beds called "Kritter" or "Noresund" and coffee tables called "Angersby" or "Funka".
And pretty quickly you also discover the Gulliver Principle of Irish furniture shopping. While most of the 70,000-odd new "residential units" built in the past 12 months are apparently designed for Lilliputians, most of the furniture on sale is of truly Brobdingnagian proportions. So while your kitchen is barely the width of an open copy of The Irish Times, the tables for sale could comfortably seat the Waltons for a Thanksgiving dinner or a breakfast meeting of the Cabinet.
And then you try to buy something.
"I want that one," you say, pointing to a sleek sofa in chocolate brown carrying a price tag you'd expect on a Nissan Almera. "Yes, it's beautiful, isn't it" says a proud assistant, regarding it with the awe a National Museum curator reserves for the Derrynaflan chalice.
"When could you deliver it?" "Oh," says the assistant, "it takes about 14 weeks. We have to order it from the factory." Since you don't fancy the uncomfortable prospect of three-and-half wretched more months watching Desperate Housewives seated on your mother's "loaned" wing-backed fireside chair from "The Balmoral" range, you make the first of many compromises. They "could sell you the leather two-seater". It's a "slightly shop-soiled" display model and the colour - primrose yellow - isn't great, and won't really go with the curtains, but it is immediately available and so you convince yourself that it's a bargain.
You pay a deposit and delivery is promised for next Friday ("Sorry, we don't do Saturday deliveries").
"Between 9 and 11" they said, so you take the morning off and settle down with Sudoku while you wait. And before you realise what time it is Liveline has started and the delivery man rings from the van and says he's stuck on the M50 and won't be there until "some time" after five. And this is only the beginning. You need another bed, and a locker and a coffee table and a proper kitchen table and more chairs. And don't forget the cushions! And well, quite honestly, where on earth do your friends think you would get the time to go and see Brokeback Mountain and, no, you didn't hear about the awful events in the Sunni Triangle and you certainly don't have time to read Village magazine. After all, you've still got to get a chest of drawers, and another wardrobe and a butcher's block for the kitchen. Did you see that one in Dunne's?
ZZZZzzzzzzzzzz.