Once upon a time, this place was called Octopus and I loved everything in there. It was as if they had stolen all of the colours in the universe and thrown them at every conceivable day-to-day item for use in the home, at the office, flying through the air, relaxing on the beach and every other possible situation one might encounter during life. Thanks to these geniuses of decoration, I own a penguin-shaped ice scraper and a wonderfully functional yellow purse, adorned with a veritable meadow of flowers.
Then one day I walked past and big boards had been erected all around the windows. And it was all like "oh bye, we're going now, Pylones is coming". And I was thinking - who are these Pylones and what have they done with my beloved Octopus? And all the work started and there was painting and building and sawing and stuff. And then the boards came down and lo and behold, the new shop was . . .
. . . exactly the same as the old one. No really, exactly the same. Then I had a look at my purse and realised that the zip tag says Pylones on it. So I guess it's kind of like when Jif turned into Cif to appease the Europeans, or Opal Fruits became Starburst (boo) because - well - I never quite worked that one out. But I guess it's something along those lines. And it was good because all of those amazingly beautiful objet du kitsch are all still available for me to run my sticky fingers over and gaze at in lustful wonder.
I've still not worked out why it involved a full-scale close-down, rearrangment and remodel of the shop when the layout looks exactly the same but hey, I guess they just wanted to shake things up. And that's fine by me. I like a good shake-up. Keeps me on my toes. read more