When you can’t trust M&S to use appropriate apostrophes, who can you trust? Perhaps they could re-employ the one sacked by Waterstones?

Or perhaps they have more pressing problems… the newly refurbished store I was in today had tens of these boxes dotted around the store catching leaks from the ceiling:

I’ve spent some time today reading Balance’s stuff about responsible marketing of alcohol… then was forced to walk through my local Tesco’s makeshift aisle of discounted alcohol in order to get into the store. Hint: this doesn’t tally with Balance’s idea of best practice.

I don’t often venture into Tesco, but I had some bedding to return today, so popped along. The customer service was truly awful.

The customer before me didn’t speak great English, and had a coupon that had been refused at the checkout. The *two* customer service assistants adopted the Basil Fawlty method of communication, almost shouting at the lady that the terms and conditions on the voucher excluded e-topups. The customer’s protestations were met with increasingly loud insistence, until one of the assistants had the inspired idea of actually reading the terms and conditions. The customer had been right: e-topups were not excluded.

As the customer left, the assistants started a frankly racist conversation about the preceding customer, before one beckoned me over with a wave. I asked to return the bedding, and the assistant continued her conversation, directing only three words at me: “receipt”, “clubcard”, and “card”. They were quite literally the only three words she said to me throughout the encounter. She didn’t greet me, she didn’t ask why I was returning the bedding, she didn’t say goodbye, and she certainly didn’t thank me; her rudely continued conversation with her colleague did provide a live demonstration of parochial bigoted opinions that was deeply disrespectful to the previous customer.

Tesco’s problems, it seems, run deep.

This is the North Tower of the former Co-op department store in Newcastle. It’s officially called Co-op House, and opened to the public in 1932. It closed in 2007, leaving just the food hall on the ground floor, which soon felt seriously unloved. It finally closed on New Year’s Eve 2011.

The Grade II listed building is now to be transformed into a Travelodge, work which will include restoring the distinctive clock to working order. But some space on the ground floor will be occupied by a small Co-op shop, ensuring its continuing its presence in this historic building.

Wendy, her mum, and I lunched in Olive and Bean today. Their paninis are delicious, and the service is always great too. If ever you’re looking for somewhere a bit different for a coffee or a sandwich in Newcastle, Olive and Bean comes highly recommended!

This advert was in the window of WHSmith in the Metrocentre today. I was amazed that anyone could be promoting software to “protect” an e-reader (protect from what?!), but also amazed to see that Peter Norton no longer features on the boxes of Norton products.

Wikipedia says the latter has been the case since 2001, which surprises me. I wonder, given that Mr Norton is 69 this year, whether it’s a case of marketing ageism? I suspect probably not, I guess pictures of software engineers on products are just not fashionable any more. That said, the fictional Mavis Beacon still beams on the packaging of that software.

Newcastle is indeed located in Scotland. It is a city, not a capital.

The response from lowcostholidays to Jamie O’Neill’s email pointing out that Newcastle isn’t, in fact, in Scotland. As featured on Bitterwallet.

Editor’s note (26th September 2014):
At the request of a Senior Outreach Executive from the lowcosttravel group, this post has been edited to remove the link to lowcostholidays.

I’ve spied the new BHS on Newcastle’s Northumberland Street this afternoon. It’s in the building vacated by Next after they shuffled off into Eldon Square, and is a few doors up from its previous home, which has been subsumed into the expanding Primark.

Graham Soult has some great before-and-after comparison shots to see the impressive scale of the building’s transformation.

On my visit, my eye was drawn to the cafe on the second floor with floor-to-ceiling windows, which strikes me as a little vertiginous. I’m also not entirely keen on having two BHS signs above one another – I understand the logic (the higher one isn’t terribly visible from the doorway), but couldn’t they just have put a logo on the doors? There were six big visible logos on the frontage on my visit (four on posters), and it really cheapens the brand.

Anyway, I’m being picky. It’s a nice looking shop from the outside – certainly moreso than the old, unloved Next – and it’s a relief to get rid of some of Northumberland Street’s scaffolding!

This is the central dome atop the Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield. Today marked my first ever visit to Meadowhall, and I wasn’t totally won over: it struck me as a little bit dark and cramped. There were plenty of free parking spaces, suggesting it wasn’t full to capacity; it must be a nightmare with Christmas crowds!

This is the “restaurant directory” outside the flagship store of the Fenwick chain on Newcastle’s Northumberland Street. Listed are the ten restaurants in the store: the Northside Diner; the Terrace Restaurant; Café 21; Johann’s Coffee Shop; the Majorca Café; Tivoli; Pret a Manger; Yo! Sushi; Caffé Nero; and the Patio Restaurant.

I reckon that ten restaurants within a single department store must be close to a record. I know that Harrods famously has 25 restaurants – not that I’ve counted and independently verified the claim – but I can’t think of any UK department store other than Harrods or Fenwick with anywhere near ten. Can anyone else think of any?

Local legend has it that this branch of Fenwick is the most profitable branch of any department store chain in the UK. The Sunday Times Rich List is often the cited source of this information, but I can’t see it under the Fenwick family’s entry in any of the Rich Lists in the Times’s archive, so I’m not absolutely convinced.

The flagship M&S virtually next door – which houses five restaurants of its own (an M&S Cafe, Kitchen, Restaurant, Deli and Food on the Go) – has a food hall which is frequently authoritatively cited as the chain’s most profitable, so the claim about Fenwick isn’t as outlandish as it might first appear.

Anyway, as interesting as all that is, I thought the picture was a bit rubbish. So here’s a bonus one of the Gateshead Millennium Bridge now that the ugly bollards have been removed.

This is the old Borders on Deepdale Retail Park in Preston. I miss Borders: it was a great chain. Nearer home, in Wallsend, there’s an unholy co-branded HMV / Waterstones / Starbucks in the old Borders shed, which isn’t quite the same – not least as the different concessions are all differently decorated!