Living on a border without a wall has some advantages but who would have thought that differing…read morerules on a pandemic would play a part in our relief. Let me digress as is my habit. Here in Northern Ireland's borderland we are still in an odd, politically enforced, selective lockdown - odd because it has daft rules and enforced by one party against the will of four others but the one party then changed its collective mind in a U Turn a few weeks in. It couldn't spin itself out of its self serving mess. I can't sit in a cafe and have a cup of coffee even if I'm six feet away from the nearest customer. I can work with someone all day, side by side, but I can't have a cup of tea with them in their house. I can buy a bottle of whiskey but not a pair of socks. If I were religious I could go to a place of worship for personal prayer but not the funeral of a neighbour due to very tight restrictions on numbers (mind you we live in a place where even attending a funeral is far from a straightforward matter - but that's another storey - oh I couldn't resist that one.) In fact it's so crazy for now we have a sad link with our American cousins - until 20 January next we both live in a kakistocracy - but at least their troubles end in 44 days time while ours will still be here when my as yet unborn great grandkids will become pensioners. Anyway enough digression (it must be a form of lockdown syndrome) the Irish Republic has almost fully re opened. All shops and cafes. That'll do nicely. So off we went across an unmanned border to this edge of town place for some more Christmas decorations and a bit of normality - it's not my idea of a place to go as it's full of the usual chain store and tat shops that I've so little interest in - the only exceptions for me are their on site cinema and a Costa coffee bar. The parking is free here with room for hundreds of cars. There's just one fairly basic public toilet to cater for the desperate. There's a KFC that's worth missing and a local cafe I don't go to as it doesn't have any food items or prices displayed in their windows. So while my wife shopped for stuff I contemplated a flat white in the Costa coffee bar, but no, it was so darn cold I decided to hold off until we got to a nearby Tesco which has a cosy warm Costa coffee bar within. I have previously written several reviews on the Costa within Tesco on Yelp but they've disappeared so I ain't writing any more. As I write it's been a momentous day for the LGBTQI community here in our kakistocracy - they can now change their civil partnerships to marriages. Yes we are being slowly brought from the dark ages (but we still have people who would take the swings out of budgie cages on a Saturday night) toward a civilised society and boy oh boy is it hard going - we must protect the State from religion here rather than the other way around. Now we here are just a few days from re opening our cafes and restaurants and we'll stay open now through Christmas despite the fact our Wu flu deaths are stubbornly high not withstanding our being quasi locked down and still more avoidable hospitalisations and deaths are likely to remain high well into next January.

COREY!!!Wanna say fantastic job. Excellent punctuality. Good timing he was very fast at his job and…read morevery efficient!! After I made three other calls to other companies I discovered that A1 was willing to do it for $125 less than anybody else.He was super friendly and thorough thanks a lot again Corey

Craig provided a very relaible service, arrived when he said he would, tidied up during and after…read morethe work and the price shocked my husband and I, in a good way! we would be more than happy to have Craig back in our home! Mrs S Campbell

We really love the personal service here and the fact that they never rush you and when they are…read moredealing with you they focus on and deal with you - nothing is too much trouble for their friendly staff. This is classic retail; the art of selling goods that don't come back to customers who do. Many local shops will answer the phone when you are dealing with them and it drives me nuts. I was in Mc Parland's hardware a few days ago and I was in a queue. Once it became my turn the phone rang and he took the call, keeping me standing over 5 minutes having already patiently queued (when his till wasn't ringing) so next time I go I'll sit outside in the car and ring in. We've literally pulled apart our downstairs replacing a kitchen, tiling over 75 square metres of flooring, new cookers, new oil boiler, granite worktops, that weigh tons, so we are choosing different paints and Casa B are able to mix our choice of colours exactly as we need them. We also re furnished our outdoors, before we started internal work, with new composite decking/fencing. We took a piece of the composite to Casa B and they pointed an electronic gizmo that instantly and perfectly identified the colour, so we could match paint. They really consistently give us top class service that brings us back and will bring us back again.

Handy shop would have any domestic electrical thing you would ever need. Staff are very unfriendly…read morebut at same helpful.

The guy working here makes this place superb to shop in. He's knowledgeable, courteous and…read moreefficient too. It's rare for me to be complimentary but honestly the sad reflection is that more and more these skills are either lacking or not there at all in retail and when you are met with this great service level it jolts you to how it used to be. It's an outlet so they don't deliver which is a real bummer especially in our case when we decided to tile a kitchen floor - we thought 60 square metres would do but had to return for a few more metres - we ended up having to transport a couple of ton including 16 bags of adhesive and bags of grout. Being an outlet it's meant to be lower price but we didn't find it much lower than other places locally that do deliver but it was the server that brought us back to here. We've been in here about 5 times to get various extra stuff as the tilers needed such stuff as plastic levelling spacers to lay the floor and at £50 for £1 worth of plastic and £16 each for strips of aluminium (and it's not one or two it's 20) you know your being robbed blind. Given that they ain't much cheaper than the competition it's time to offer delivery.

Our extensions was completed ontime and on budget, We looked at other builders, we are so glad we…read morewent with Kerr Developments Ltd