They're Looting Woolies
An ugly, bad-tempered atmosphere in downtown Inverness today, as joyless bargain hunters picked over the decaying carcass of the Woolworth's store. I was expecting as much when I heard Good Morning Scotland report the closing-down sale this morning. By lunchtime there were queues spilling out of the doors and the shelves were being stripped in scenes that resembled the looting frenzy you associate with a riot.
"What a shame," seems to be the phrase on everyone's lips, as it looks increasingly likely that from our High Streets after Christmas Eve. Yes, what a shame indeed, but then no one can quite say why they feel that way. Perhaps it's all those associations from our childhood and teenage years. I bought my first - and only - guitar in the big Woolworth's store in Glasgow's Argyle Street. In that same store I also bought the most wonderful am/fm radio which looked like a piece of military equipment and came with a microphone that allowed you to amplify your voice through the speaker.
In the Broughty Ferry Woolie's I bought seaside toys, spud-guns, water pistols and picture postcards. In the Largs store I would take my children there after Sunday afternoon trips to the Nardini's ice cream parlour. The Byres Road store in the West End of Glasgow was a lunchtime refuge from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã at Queen Margaret Drive.
Today, in Inverness, I squeezed my way past the throng of shoppers - their faces tripping them - who had been lured by the promise of 50% reductions. No one seemed to have anything particularly exciting in their baskets. One woman was juggling with rolls of Christmas wrapping paper, another was holding a toy car with a built-in reverse parking sensor.
There wasn't much left on the shelves to tempt me to join that queue. I considered buying up the entire stock of desk fans and selling them for a profit next summer. Too risky an investment given that summer sometimes doesn't come. It was either that or those towels that look like kilts. There were dozens of those.
In the end, like so many of my recent trips to Woolworths, I bought nothing. And that, I suppose, was the problem.
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