THERE are three different levels of Hell.

Last week, I went to a first birthday party for a friend’s baby. That was pretty bad. Most couples turned up with their own baby. I felt a bit empty handed with my four-pack of Aldi beer.

There was crying and tantrums and flood flying everywhere — and that was just when I lost at pass the parcel.

Four hours of pretending to be interested in other people’s babies, interspersed with excruciating small talk, is not my idea of fun.

The only consolation was that I was forced to miss another horror show at the Macron.

I’m not sure which is worse, watching a load of dribbling babies struggle to play a game where all you have to do is pass something to someone else or ... well, you can see where I’m going with this one.

The next level of Hell is enforced shopping — what other kind is there? At the Trafford Centre the day after the party there was more kicking and screaming as I was dragged around the shops looking for curtains for the bedrooms.

When my other half told me she wanted to see Fifty Shades of Grey, I thought she was talking about watching a film when we got home.

Turned out she was giving me an idea of the number of different pairs of curtains we would be considering.

We settled, eventually, on a natty charcoal number.

‘Great,’ I said. ‘Let’s get two pairs and get out of here.’

She laughs at this point. Turns out you can’t get the same colour curtains for two different rooms. Silly me.

Earlier this week, God tested me one last time.

He sent me to Ikea. It is a modern day labyrinth designed to test the faith of even the most patient of saints.

We went to look at kitchens, which are in a different time zone to the rest of the store.

I have the bladder of an 80-year-old, so 45 minutes in, I started to panic. I was two miles from the nearest loo. The irony was not lost on me as I walked hurriedly through the bathroom section.

The reward, at the end of Ikea is supposedly their cafe. You get some Swedish meatballs or a hotdog.

Weirdly, people rave about the food. ‘I only go for the meatballs,’ they will say ... or ‘at least you’ll get a hotdog’.

In truth the food is terrible. Dry bread and a cheap and nasty boiled sausage. I wouldn’t feed it to a dog.

But such is the ordeal you have just gone through, that any sustenance at that point tastes like Heaven.