I'm a bit stingy! Well, when it comes to clothes anyway! I'm not a slave to labels at all. A black t-shirt is just a black t-shirt and I'd rather have 5 cheap ones than one expensive one.
Umm, I can feel the Other Halfs eyes burning into my back! I do have a bit of a thing about labels, but only shoes and especially boots. Buffalos you see, well the more expensive they are the longer they last (just got a lovely pair of rare purple and cream ones, fabulous!)

Getting back on track, and we're talking about clothes and in particular, clothes and Primark.

Now I don't care when the company started, I don't care when it started, how many staff it has, etc. I don't even care if the MD has a cleaner called Beryl who he regularly takes away on business trips.
You do? You obviously have more time than me!
All I care is that they have 2 shops in Bristol's Broadmead area, open 7 days a week and late on Thursdays!
Although the situation in Bristol is a bit odd, we have 2 about a minutes walk apart. See they used to have quite a small shop was hugely popular and hence huge queues. When the larger 2 storey C&A round the corner closed its door Primark moved in but didn't close the smaller one!

So what do you see when you walk in our Primark store. If its Saturday afternoon, its usually chaos! Its definitely the most popular store in Broadmead, so its usually a sea of people.
And the clothes, lots and lots of clothes! The complete right hand side and rear is female, the left is male. Upstairs you have lingerie, nightwear, shoes, kids clothes and accessories.

Let us first to the men's, a goodly range it is to. If you're a young lad on your first night out or maybe a first date, but that £20 from your mum or your Jobseekers Allowances stretches your budget too much for Topman then it is possible to find both trousers and a top with enough left over for a pint. Primark has plenty of fashionable copies to stop you being embarrassed..

Perhaps you're past that now, well's there's plenty of jumpers and comfy trousers to keep you happy and its one of the few places you can still get Y-fronts. Loads of plain shirts, jumpers and trousers although it must be said that their patriotism during England football matches knows no bounds!
Yep, know you know where that matching family you saw Majorca go clothes shopping!

Predictably the ladies clothes is my usual stop. There is a huge range in loads of styles. We'll start off at the very 'fashionable', this is where you'll find the 15/16yr olds resisting the urge to shove the odd denim mini skirt in their bags. They're surrounded by tops the size of band aids, that don't go above a size 12. Indeed, this is the place for those who like to wear the sequinned 'Pussy' t-shirts with their bellies hanging. (While hastily denying they really need to wear a size 16)

So neither being the size of a stick or have my gut hanging out, its to the rear of the store for me. Back there is the real mish mash of clothes and styles. Primark have got the knack of making you walk round the whole store down to a fine art.

On the more sensible side? You'll find yourself a nice blouse here, or a nice plain skirt. At the other extreme if you're getting towards the free bus pass side of things but think orange skin, blue eyeliner and lots of gold are the 'in-thing', then there's going to be something shiny and tight too!

But what Primarks fast becoming famous for is its knock offs of current fashion. I'll be the first to admit I'm not fashionable, but even I know that gypsy skirts and military style jackets are rather 'in' and Primark have plenty of them. My daughter recently picked up a skirt at £8, a fraction of anywhere else. And rather bizarrely I recently saw a Primark jacket on Ebay which was going for quite a bit more than in store and it still had 2 days to go!
Its also the best place to buy plain black trousers and skirts suitable for work, when I say plain I don't mean the same styles but more, the wide legs, decorations, etc.

Lingerie also follows the above rules, from the downright tacky to the sensible and all in between. The lingerie probably best represents Primarks value for money, they have stacks of knickers at no more than £2. Of course they're not La Senza or M&S but for cheap and cheerful everyday pants you cant beat 'em.

So you've identified the lovely item you want and its time to choose your size and therein lies one of Primarks problems. They have no one standard size. That is to say, although all the tags say size 12, they wont all be the same size. As perfectly encountered by myself, I picked out three pairs of trousers to try, one wouldn't go over my bum, another pair has no chance of doing up and the last were baggy around my waist! So if you're not sure, try first, the changing rooms aren't huge but there are two of them

Up until the age of 3 or 4 both my kids had the majority of their clothes from Primark. Value-wise they are fantastic, tops from pound, jumpers and trouser from £2. We're not talking falling apart in a couple of weeks, shrinking to the size of a hanky after one wash, bur they wont last, and they'll fade but at least you haven't been conned into paying £30 for a Next t-shirt, and kids grow so fast it doesn't really matter anyway.

One of the best parts of Primark is their seemingly random sales, they never seem to advertise them, but take a look at the tags and they've usually gone down to a few quid!

Now aesthetics and aesthetically Primark is not pleasing on the eye. Beige, cream and green, who though of that combination? I'm sure it looked clean and fresh 20 years ago, now its just looks grubby and dirty. Anyone with a pushchair will tell you that Primark is a nightmare as people tend to chuck the clothes on the floor and staff don't tend to pick them up. The underwear is also piled like a market stall about to fall over. By Saturday afternoon the place just looks a mess, tables piled high with screwed up clothes, clothes all over the floor and the racks.

The staff could all do with some cheerful juice! I've never seen such a miserable bunch. Unhelpful, miserable and on occasion downright rude. Mind you, if I had to work minimum wage in that gloomy, dreary place I'd have a face like a dogs backside as well!

And when are they going to come into the 21st century? Its not been that long that they have actually had barcode scanners. Chip and Pin? They'd probably faint at the thought of that scary technology. They still don't take debit cards!

Then I heard the funniest thing! Broadmead is basically being rebuilt to provide a 'Shopping Centre of the future'. By the looks of it, it will be fantastic. We have a well known 'flagship' store already. Very noticeable and imposing, it was home to John Lewis for many years until they moved to Cribbs Causeway and more recently House of Fraser but they will be vacating it for a new store. So who wants it? Who's going to be the flagship store? Primark! The collective Bristolian laugh could be heard for miles. Primark in a 5 storey, 'posh' department store!

But you never know, they might just get it, but what would that mean for the consumer? Yes, you might get this nice big store, clean and tidy with all the up to date technology. However this has to be paid for, more technology, more overheads and more staff wages has to lead to more costs and who is going to pay for all this? And suddenly Primark wont seem so much of a bargain.

UPDATE

A week after I write this what happens? The big store closes down! The whole of Broadmead is being revamped and Primark and the stores next to it are all being demolished. Hence we are back to the small store and it now loses masses of Brownie points. I promise to keep you updated on where the new one is going to be!

P.S
I went to the one in Cardiff on Saturday and it is vastly superior to the one in Bristol, clean, tidy, good range of sizes and Lord above cheerful sales people AND they take Electron! Must be something in that Welsh water!