A rare trip to Queensgate

On Friday (Good Friday) we made, what is for me, a very rare trip into town.

I can’t think when I last went into Peterborough to go shopping or look around - no wonder businesses are struggling.

I wanted to buy a couple of things - some headphones so that I could listen to my Michel Thomas Total French on my iPod on the train and also some new casual shirts.

Margaret also wanted to look at some dresses that she’d seen on the internet. She wants a new dress for Max and Inna’s wedding. Her friend had offered to make her one, but Margaret has not taken her measurements (as promised) and was making some lame excuses for not having done so: my sister should have done it, but it was a bit complicated; she’d been worried about Gravel; the Moore Stevens e-mail server had been down ...

Well, the dress hunt didn’t go well. We stopped off in John Lewis and they didn’t have the dress that she’d seen online and so couldn’t try it on. No doubt John Lewis has got wise to the fact that women see a dress on a website, come to their store to try it on and then buy it online. If they’ve any sense, they’ll monitor websites and take all dresses that are featured on the internet out of the store.

It didn’t put Margaret in the best of humour, but that job done, we went upstairs to buy some headphones. I’d toyed with the idea of getting some noise-reducing headphones, but I couldn’t find any and the ordinary headphones seemed expensive enough. I selected the cheapest I could find, but then went for the second cheapest because they had proper ear pads, not ear-pieces. They actually seem OK, so I’m looking forward to trying them out sometime soon.

Next it was ground floor for some shirts. This was going to be more difficult because I didn’t want to buy a shirt made in China (I don’t approve of their record on human rights, especially Tibet) and I didn’t want to buy anything from India or the far east - I can’t support 12-hour days for 10-year-olds, so it had to be something from Turkey or the poorer parts on Europe (Portugal). The chances of finding anything made in England are next to zero.

It clearly wasnt going to go well. The nicest shirt (from Hackett) was £90 and from Vietnam; Barbour (a brand name I wouldn’t have expected to find on a shirt) were good, but made in India; Tommy Hilfiger and John Lewis were Chinese ...

I decided to have a look in Beales, which used to be Westgate House (the Co-op) and, initially things didn’t look any better. We did eventually find some shirts that probably were made in England, but they looked like shirts that James May (the Top Gear presenter) would wear - awful! In the end, I found some nice quality ones from a company called Vedoneire that was selling British-made jackets. It didn’t say where the shirts were made, but they were cheaper than John Lewis and they were good quality.

Why on earth you can’t buy a shirt made in Britain anywhere in Peterborough is beyond me. I wouldn’t mind paying a premium price for something that is good quality and that I could be sure hadn’t seen made by slave children in a despotic country on the other side of the world. Time was when gloves were made in Yeovil, knives in Sheffield, hats in Stockport and plates in Stoke-on-Trent. These days, even really well-known British brands like Barbour and Hunter make their goods overseas and they use all kinds of marketing tricks to convince you that you’re buying a home-made product. “Designed in Britain” is a favourite; Hackett pins British icons to its Vietnamese clothing with phrases like “The Boat Race Collection” or “Mayfair Range”. It’s children’s clothes are call “Little Britons” - it should add “made by little Chinese.”

We needed a new kettle because our old one was leaking and we’d also decided to buy a new toaster. Oddly enough, a toaster is one thing you can buy that’s high quality and is made in Britain and it’s also a brand that’s suddenly become hugely fashionable. Dualit toasters have been made since 1945 and they’re famous for being repairable, you can buy new elements if they burn out and all the other bits and pieces are so rugged that a Dualit toaster should last you a lifetime. The company is now cashing in on its iconic reputation for toasters by making every other kind of kitchen appliance, none of which say “made in Britain” because none of them are. Well, we bought a Dualit toaster and a matching Dualit kettle (which is very nice, where-ever it’s made).

While I was wandering around Beales moaning about Bangladeshi sweat shops, Margaret was wandering around the dresses section moaning about nothing fitting her. I said that her friend had offered to make her a dress and she should get that offer back on track, so when we got home I took the measurements (which was complicated, but which I think I have got right) and Margaret resolved to call her friend in the week.

As luck would have it, next day we bumped into the friend in Whittlesey and so Margaret was able to tell her what we’d done and promised to get the measurements to her in the week, arrange a trip to London to buy the fabric and get her first fitting sorted out. That is one dress that we know will be made in England!