I must admit that I’ve always had a bit of a weakness for “cheap shops” and when I was growing up, Woolworths was something of a Wonderland for the likes of “Us Kids” – a place where you could buy all manner of useless items that you didn’t realise you needed, until you spotted them on a Woolworths counter. Somewhere along the way, Woolworths lost the plot and went slightly “upmarket” – though any fool (me, in particular) could have told them that this was NOT A GOOD IDEA and, sure enough, Woolworths disappeared from our High Streets.
Woolworths was no great loss by that stage in my life because it was no longer a “cheap shop” so I had gravitated to markets where I could continue to buy useless/unnecessary items, but with the added excitement of the vendors’ cries, along the lines of “…and if you can’t see the value in this, you won’t see your way home”!
Come the appearance of the various “Pound Shops”, I was back in my element – though the “99p Shop” became my “Cheap Shop of Choice” after I watched or read something-or-other about the shop’s founder, and how he built up The Huge Family Business it has since become….
BUT I AM A BIT DISILLUSIONED NOW…. “POUNDWORLD” seems to be the new Pound-Shop-on-The-Block”, opening up here, there and everywhere”, under banner signage “poundworld – Everything £1”
“Me and Him Indoors” happened upon a local newly-opened POUNDWORLD the other day so OBVIOUSLY, popped in and bought all manner of useless items. Then, once we’d gone through the checkout, our bill came to £10.49….. “Ummmm, how can there be 49p on the end?”, I enquired of the young lad on the checkout, this being a POUND SHOP and all that… He looked though my bill and told me that the “Weetabix Fruit and Fibre” had cost £1.49.
I didn’t have the heart to make a song and dance, being as how the shop was newly opened and the young assistant might have been in his first job, so I paid up… and then moaned at Him Indoors all the way home, because I don’t even like Weetabix – and he was the one who put it in my basket!