NORTHERN PLANNER

I’m supposed to be curbing putting things off, yet I found myself in Durham sorting an emergency passport. With four hours to kill while they processed it I wandered around the shops.

I stopped in M&S to try on some Autograph for Men clothes. The ads say Bryan Ferry wears them (he doesn’t, his clothes are handmade by supermodels wearing Agent Provocateur),so maybe some of his cool would rub off on me? No way, like all M&S clothes, they made me look like my Dad. The womens’s stuff looked better (I didn’t try them on incidentally), but the store still has that sterile feel I remember from childhood, with bored men waiting for women  to try on clothes they’ll take back anyway.

Next up was Woolworths, were I found this crime against my childhood. Some things should be left as they are, Star Wars is one of them.

Then it was Waitrose (bear mind they haven’t many stores up North and I haven’t been in one for years)…Wow! Imagine a grubby little Northern urchin, chimney soot on his cheeks,  let loose in a sweet shop and that will give you a good idea of my visit. The packaging! The layout! The presentation!

Retail will be about experience more and more in future. Waitrsose shows how far packaging and presentation can go to create this. Imagine being so confident in your food that the packging gets out of it’s way. Imagine making the palatte flip flop with the way you write the name. Thank God they’re not in Leeds, I’d be bankrupt within a month.