The final of four short Christmas stories written and read by author and poet Michael Smith, filmed by Nick Seaton. Watch the stories – as they are released – here or download them as podcasts from iTunes or read them below

The third of four short Christmas stories written and read by author and poet Michael Smith, filmed by Nick Seaton. Watch the stories – as they are released – here or download them as podcasts from iTunes or read them below

She’d suckered me into a trip to the Christmas holiday hell of Ikea, packed to the rafters with off-duty office fodder and their screaming kids, all of them completely driven to distraction by the dangling carrot of affordable kitchenwares and couches…

Me, her and her mam were lying low in the café, steeling ourselves for the ensuing scrum with plates of meatballs and chips… I looked out from the big window across a dual carriageway and a grotty Mock-Tudor suburban vista, when I was surprised to see the flags and towers of an enormous Hindu temple peeking dreamily through the rows of pebbledashed houses across the carpark… the Ikea experience was really doing in me already, and I decided to abandon my girlfriend and her mam to their nest-building instincts and go and check it out…