Primark - Does it Get Any Worse Than This ?

There is a retail phenomenon that has enveloped these shores in recent years, at first it was just the cheaper cities, the ones who didn't care too much about image, the ones where the planners had no grand ambition to be held in city planning esteem as the sort of planned city centre that every city should aspire to, the ones with a more than three to one ratio of social housing schemes on their perimeters and a bus service of sorts to shuttle the social security clothing coupon bearers in and out of the centre...

But now every city centre has a Primark.
And Leeds has a fekkin huge one.

If the polyester "shell" or "leisure" suit is your bag then Primark is your Valhalla, if you do not own footwear that does not have vertical stripes and the makers name down the sides, if the phrase "shirt and tie" bears only faint whisps of recognition from the time that you had to attend the magistrates court, if you are capable of arranging the words "Adidas", "Fred Perry" and "Nike" into some sort of order of preference and desirability for any given month in the year, if you spend more on ornaments for your ears, neck and hairstyle than you do food for your several children, then Primark is your Sweet Home Alabama, its the place you wish you could return to just by clutching your small dog to your breast, screwing your eyes tight shut, clicking your heels three times and saying it's so.

And if its so then you will resemble the Primark Ladies in my sketch, a sketch that was made last Thursday when the person who proclaims to be welded inextricably to my wallet until eternity (even though I have pleaded loss of memory for the whole of 1983), took me to that high alter of appalling taste and cheap fabrics.

I swear that I could have searched all day in that city block sized four storey retail emporium and still not found a single item of clothing priced above £3.99, and I'd have searched for the rest of the following day to find and item that was worth its price tag, and I would have failed my mission on both days as well as being declared clinically insane at the end of the task.

Somewhere in India, or Indonesia, or Taiwan, there are whole cities of dirt poor downtrodden people who harbour dreams of wealth, importance and prestige, all to be earned at the high alter of Primark's annual purchase order for polyester track suits in various garish colour combinations starting at size 2XL and increasing. In these cities the children forsake their education completely to work in the same sweat shops as their parents, grandparents and great grandparents, four generations aiming at the golden shot target of 200 4XL sweatpants a day, a target which if achieved will mean each pant can leave the factory door with a price tag of a few coppers, a price tag which even after being shipped halfway around the world to our shores will be still struggle to hit double numbers of pence, thus maintaining the Primark promise, proclaimed from all of its street front windows "We May Sell Shite, Hell We Admit To Selling Shite, But Its The Cheapest Shite You'll Ever Buy Lady".

Its a horrible shop where horrible people fight to buy horrible goods, goods which are at first piled high, not hung on racks, but piled high on pallets with a cardboard price stand placed on top, all of which is soon spread all over the floor for many aisles around as the clientele fight each other for the dubious honour of being the one who manages to check out a whole trolley full of goods and break the magical £10 mark - no-one has ever spent £10 and managed to carry all of their own bags out of Primark, it is simply impossible, a £10 expenditure would require a forklift truck assistance.

I lasted for ten minutes in Primark last week, ten minutes in the living reincarnation of Bedlam until I sold my, and my children's souls to a devil who promised to show me the fire exit and the stairs to sanity in return for my afterlife, its a small price to pay.

Christmas shopping

After friday nights knees-up in the north east we headed back down the A1 with me still hyper-active and headachey after the massive infusion of vitamin c and assorted chemicals from the several pints of what is described as "fresh orange" behind the bar at The Terrace.

Suzanne decided it would be a great idea to call in on Harrogate, seeing as we were passing, in order to do some (more) christmas shopping, she's panicing now as we haven't yet bought anything to eat on christmas day, no turkey, nothing, personally i couldn't care less, a few slices of reprocessed wafer thin turkey sandwich meat on a slice of brown bread would do for me, for her it would be then end of civilisation if we didn't cook a bird the size of a small horse then throw most of it in the bin two days later

So we stopped off in Harrogate, the posh peoples idea of what a county town should look like, we all have an impression of the typical "Harrogate Lady", the sort of lady who lunches with friends rather than working, a lady who has actually never worked as her stockbroker / banker / lawyer husband leaches enough money from the rest of society to keep them in their five bedroomed four bathroomed detached new-build with a double garage with electric doors and a nice conifer in the front garden.

But its not actually like that at all.

Harrogate is not very posh, its a bit like Leeds with only 5% of the shops but 100% of the chavs.

I found myself accidently in TK Max at one point - now I thought TK Max was a cheap shop, apparently it sells end of line stuff that the posh shops don't want anymore, it specialises in selling designer names at discount prices (I lifted that phrase straight out of their shop window), for which you need to read "last years fashions that didn't sell at silly prices".

In fact its still not cheap, £35 for a Pierre Cardin plain white shirt is still expensive.

OK, for those of you who buy the labels its probably cheap, but the label on a plain white shirt is inside the collar and unless you are the sort of twat who introduces yourself then turns around and gets people to read the name inside your shirt collar, then £35 is a lot of dosh to pay for a fekkin plain white shirt, especially as you have to fight your way through TK Max's unique product presentation methods to find it.

To get a job at TK Max you first have to demonstrate your complete lack of any spatial awareness, presentation skills, or desire to sell anything. Your job as a sales assistant at TK Max will consist of yoru supervisor giving you shitloads of shirts, trousers or jackets and telling you to "put them out there". If you can accomplish the task within 20 seconds and return to the stockroom for another shitload of stuff to "put out there" then you get the job.

TK Max believe in maximising their sales floorspace by cramming as many racks of stuff into the area as possible, and then cramming as much stuff onto those racks as possible - sorting by size, colour, or clothing type is an alien concept to them - pile it in there and get the punters to sort it for you seems to be the motto.

Having fought our way through crowds of tracksuit clad Harrogateans most of whom were chomping on pastries and pies (the pigeons in Harrogate are the fattest I've ever seen) we finally made it home to find the first of my christmas presents to myself waiting on the doorstep - a collection of all 19 films made in the 1930/40's by the great British comedian Will Hay, I watched on of them "Wheres the Fire ?" on Saturday night - bloody good present if I say so myself, I'm going to enjoy those over christmas.

I have one more present to arrive yet - the complete 142 episodes of Bilko on dvd, with a bit of luck it will arrive before the weekend and then the family can go amuse themselves over the holiday as I sit glued to the tv.


And finally - I put the wheelie bin out last night ready for its regular Monday morning collection, we've got a backlog of rubbish with the wheelie bin full and two more sacksfull of trash to go out there too.

The bin was uncollected this morning.

Then I noticed that no-one else int he street had put theirs out - the collection was on sunday morning as the binmen try and get ahead of themselves in readyness for the christmas weekend - bas'tads - so now I've got a full wheelie bin and two more sacks of rubbish to take to the tip in my car. Bugger.