Shopping

[watervole]

There's something highly enjoyable about going shopping when you know you're no longer totally skint and having to watch every penny.

So I decided to celebrate, enter the big time, make a purchase I'd been putting off for years...

I bought a new doormat.

With some purchases, I price compare all over the place, but for this item, I knew exactly where I was going to buy it.  There's a shop down Poole High St called Boones.  It's been there 28 years that I know of (from having lived in the area) and possibly for much much longer than that (100 years would not totally surprise me).  It's an old-fashioned hardware store of the kind that is virtually extinct. The floor is bare wooden floorboards that are worn by the passage of feet.  Behind the long counter is a wall full of little wooden drawers that hold every kind of item.  The shop itself is packed with every kind of item from fishing gear to garden tools.  It's the kind of place where you go if you want a three amp fuse and know that nowhere else is likely to have one, and if anywhere else did, they'd make you buy a packet of 20.

I went there a couple of weeks ago seeking a single link to repair the chain fastening my cape.  Hadn't had any luck elsewhere.  In Boones, they not only found one (20p) but even fitted it onto the chain for me for no extra charge.

That's why I went there for my doormat.  I want that shop, with it's wonderful range of goods and wonderful, helpful, knowledgeable staff to be there as long as is humanly possible.

Comments

[pennski.livejournal.com]

Ooh yes, I've found a couple of hardware shops like that over the years and try to find something to buy to keep them going.

[uitlander]

When I moved to Witney there was a hardware shop like that. Like you I made every purchase I could there. About a year after I moved away I went back and found it had become a wine bar. This saddened me considerably.

[darth-tigger.livejournal.com]

I love that sort of shop. Where you can go in and ask for a left-handed widget, and they ask what size, and then go to the 150 drawers of widgets and find the exact one you need.

Usually staffed by a small bloke in a brown coat and with a pencil behind his ear, in my experience!

[darth-tigger.livejournal.com]

Oops, sorry, posted twice by mistake

[catalenamara.livejournal.com]

What a wonderful store! I remember ones like that from years ago, but the local ones have all closed now; the owners retired.

[philbradley.livejournal.com]

Yes! We have a shop like this in the village that I grew up in, only ours is called Potters. Been there since before I was born. I thought all shops like this were called Potters until I was of a reasonable age! We buy from there whenever we can as well.

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

Sounds wonderful :) There was one of those terribly old-fashioned haberdashery shops in a nearby town for years, it's gone now...

[kerravonsen]

What a wonderful shop! I can understand your patronage.

[sweetheartwhale.livejournal.com]

oh huge LOL when I read that..thanks - Need LOLS this week
You should be writing comedy scripts with your sense of timing
i wish you joy of your new doormat!

[tlanti.livejournal.com]

It's great to know shops like that still exist! :) And nothing beats helpful, friendly staff... :)

[vjezkova.livejournal.com]

I wish we had such a fabulous shop here too! :-)

[rockwell-666.livejournal.com]

There's a hardware shop like this in Fratton Road in Portsmouth called Robert Bish DIY.

They have been there for donkey's years and are always willing to give that extra bit of service or give you advice or find that thing you need but you don't know what it's called but it looks sort of like this with a bendy bit and a hook and "oh, you mean one of *these*...!"

Unfortunately shops like that are few and far between these days :-(

[julesjones]

One of these days you're going to have to Come North and see father-in-law's shop...

[steverogerson.livejournal.com]

We used to have a great hardware shop on Sneinton Dale. I'm not much of a diy'er, but when I moved into my current house I had a number of small jobs that needed doing. The guy there was brilliant. I'd go in and tell him what the job was, he'd tell me how to do it and what I needed. Sadly that shop is now closed - a dying breed.

[decemberleaf.livejournal.com]

Hardware stores and paper-goods stores and of course bookstores are my favorites, and we have here in my town still two of the three. Whenever I buy a book I get it from the local bookstore, at prices higher than I would have to pay to amazon.com, because I'd be devastated if the bookstore had to close, as the paper-goods store did. ("Put your money where your mouth is," as one neighbor put it, who does the same; that's easy to say, but an expensive choice.) The local hardware store, though, has managed to keep its prices competitive with the huge box stores on the main road. It has the worn bare wooden floorboards you describe; also it has on display, gathering dust on the top shelves, some very old implements, everything from an ancient wheelbarrow to an ancient wash-board-and-hand-wringer (well, maybe not "ancient": actually in use not so long ago). Best thing of all: the people who work there, many of them known mutually by name, friendly and knowledgeable. You usually come away from a transaction there feeling good about what you've bought, and you know it's likely to last long and serve well. I'm so glad you got that doormat!