Marks and Spencer

-
Marks & Spencer has been in Kettering for as long as I can remember, and it's never changed much. Apart from the knicker department, I usually walk on, on, on through the clothes part. The colours are over-bright, the styles look dire on the mannequins - and they're thin, so what on earth will they look like on me? - and nothing looks as if it much wants to be put with anything else.

However, last week, I was whizzing past Marks & Sparks after an unsuccessful quest to find running shoes (I decided I didn't want to wait for the assistants to finish their conversation) and I spotted a coral scoop neck top. Aha! I thought. I like that, and it's cheap. So, in I sailed, to be faced with a display of scoop neck tops. There they were: bright blue, bright green and sundry other colours, but not a single coral. Stopped in my tracks, I had a quick glance at the other side of the shop. Nope. Racks of A-line skirts, displayed in that fetching frontways-on method Marks & Sparks loves, which makes even the size 10s look as if they're made for elephants.

I went a bit further in. Lots of one-off Per Una, all frilled and furbelowed. The Classics department - wall to wall beige. No coral top. Nearly at the knicker part now, I thought, and looked round for an assistant to ask. Surely they can't be so popular they've sold out already? If so, what's the point of having them in the window? No assistant. Might as well have a look at the knicker department. And there, just to the left of the knickers: rank upon rank of coral tops. Reader, I bought one. I am wearing it now. I am very pleased with it, but if I hadn't decided I was long overdue for a rummage amongst the mix-and-match knickers, I'd never have found it and retired, money still in my wallet.

I do wonder if perhaps this is just one reason Marks & Sparks aren't doing so well just now.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes

-
Image
My friend Louise sent me this picture today. It's from a children's book with the rather wince-making title For The Wee Ones. I thought, when I read that (because I read the message before I looked at the picture) that the picture was going to be a typical winsome production from the school of artists who think (or who are paid to think) that the child is a thing sent from God and a blissful thing. They had obviously never met a child, and certainly not mine. I should have known Louise better. The artist responsible for Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes slipped this one past the editors. Just look at the poor, broken Mother Rabbit. She knows she has not the faintest chance of being listened to, and poor thing, she is stooped in the way of a mother to whom this is just the lastest in a long line of horror; with nothing good to come. And Archibald is obviously the spawn of the Devil. Just look at those eyes. He'll have the bed after he's finished the bedclothes
Read more

Dick Sparrow - 40 Horse Hitch, and Neil Dimmock's 46 Percherons

-
Image
Here's a clip of Dick Sparrow driving 40 horses. It's an amazing sight, particularly when the shot changes to show the team from the rear and you get the great incongruity of modern American corporate architecture as a background to the wagon and horses. I love the anticipation in the video: the sense of something amazing being just round the corner is palpable. Thanks to Christina Wilsdon for telling me about this world record 46 Percheron hitch (alas just stills) but you get the idea.
Read more

The Way Things Were: Pony Magazine in the 1960s

-
Image
As you have probably realised by now, as a child, I was pony-obsessed. My favourite monthly reading was Pony Magazine, which I read cover to cover: every advert; every word. I recently bought a set of Pony Magazines from the 1960s. I actually took Pony in the 1970s, but there wasn’t a lot of difference between the decades in the style and contents of the magazine. One advert which took me instantly back to that state of childhood wanting; longing for things I couldn’t have, and trying to work out what I could do to afford them, was for Jacatex riding clothes. How I loved that ad. The Pat hacking jacket; the Pat riding mac and the Pat jodhpurs. Who was Pat? Was there a Pat? Or were the clothes just something that was off pat? It was never explained. Jacatex adverts didn’t change much over the years. The 1969 ad below is the same one that I remember from the 1970s, a cheerful pony girl in immaculate clothes. I don’t know whether Jacatex ever did haul themselves into the modern age a
Read more