Let's go shopping

It’s off to the shops day in England. The grand opening. Millions of pounds saved during lockdown by the fortunate ones will disappear in a glorious spending spree. Just what is needed to cheer us up and to help businesses get back on their feet.

Ever since I was a young schoolboy I have loved to ‘go shopping’, from street markets to department stores.

Petticoat Lane market

In prewar London there was Petticoat Lane market in Spitalfields, Arding & Hobbs in Wandsworth - my first experience of department stores - and the even bigger Gamages in Holborn where Rosemary and I, catalogue in hand, spent the money we had collected all year to go Christmas shopping.

Those money making stores were nothing compared with the monster shops I sought out overseas.The dazzling Ginza area in Tokyo, the KDB in Stuttgart, with its food department, said then to be the largest in the world.

The Hudson's Bay Company mall in Toronto, one of the earliest shopping malls, which went bust when Rosemary and I were on holiday there. We went every day collecting bargains as the price was reduced by 10 percent  daily until everything went. 

Cardiff was a shopper’s paradise with its Howells,  David Morgan, Debenhams,  Seccombes, Mackross and Evan Roberts, where I bought my Cardiff High School uniform.

All long gone, with Debenhams closing now. Even their successors, huge shopping centres and hypermarkets are under threat.

Cardiff has had bustling open air markets, the first above a canal, which moved a few times as the city centre was developed, before disappearing. 

But although our shopping experience has changed over the years the urge is still there.

I can’t wait to go on my scooter to Albany Road and perhaps, if someone will take me, to Marks and Spencer.

On this historic day I could not resist joining in. I have ordered a tube of superglue from Amazon.