As everyone who has ever worked anywhere knows, the worst bit of any business is the customers. Here, Steerforth recalls the most absurd questions he was asked when working as a bookseller... The following is a real-life encounter I had with a customer when I was a fledgling bookseller: Customer - I ... Read More...
Shopping
In a welcome return to The Dabbler, our style guru Susan Muncey meets artist Roger Miles, whose works form part of the 'Bright Old Things' project at Selfridges... Contrary to the media portrayal of older people, not all are sitting at home feeling lonely. This is just as well, because according to ... Read More...
How did Thanksgiving evolve from a simple religious ceremony into a violent shopping stampede?... Spaniards have their Running of the Bulls at Pamplona; Americans have their Stampede of the Shoppers on Black Friday. Both are high risk, violent sports that frequently end in severe injury or death. Black Friday falls on ... Read More...
Continuing our occasional series on shops and shopping, Brit takes us to a rather unusual 'garden centre'... The best shop in the Bristol area, and by extension the world, is Chief Trading Post, in Oldland Common. It is, I suppose, a Garden Centre; but Chief Trading Post is a ‘Garden Centre’ ... Read More...
A couple of weeks ago an issue of Sunday Times Style Magazine appeared to be dedicated to the feminist cause. There was an article by Camilla Long on the relevance of feminism today, accompanied by comments from Caitlin Moran and a number of media-savvy younger women involved with female causes. ... Read More...
This week Susan witnesses some top-class profanity at the West End's hottest new musical... If my father were still alive, he would certainly have walked out after only a few minutes. After all, he banned me from watching Till Death Us Do Part and Steptoe and Son because of the swearing. Despite ... Read More...
Susan makes an error of judgement and finds herself in Westfield... If I had a pound for every time I’ve clipped my alloy wheels on a badly designed car park entrance/exit, I’d be a wealthy woman by now. The other time this seems to happen is when my mother is in ... Read More...
Susan's been globe-trotting again... Arriving at the luggage reclaim in Cape Town, I couldn’t spot a single black face among the passengers from our plane. South Africa does seem to attract a certain type of tourist - less package tour, more ‘comfortably travelled.’ There’s an air of middle-England Middletonia about the ... Read More...
Susan Muncey has been delighting us since The Dabbler's inception with her Saturday Retroprogressive column, which brought to light all manner of curious and wonderful developments in the world of style and design. But what we really want to read about, of course, is Susan herself and her life as ... Read More...
I’ve never understood how today’s multi-tasking mums manage to juggle children and household responsibilities with jobs, social networking, pets and Zumba classes. In the past we would have been dressed in a pinny, baking fairy cakes with the children, or (in a freshly laundered pinny) welcoming home our bread-winning husband, ... Read More...