‘Excuse me, will you be closing soon?’ But Denis – the elderly, headset-wearing cashier at Poundland on Witney High Street – can’t hear me. He smiles thinly, in the way the hard of hearing do, before assisting a customer with a pushchair. On the adjacent till, Barbara answers for him: ‘Cash only here.’ Clearly, we are all talking at cross-purposes. It hardly matters: the tills keep ringing.
Yet despite a brisk trade here in Oxfordshire, Poundland, the discount store in 600 locations nationwide, is to enter into administration. This would be a tragedy.
Poundland is much misunderstood. It is assumed that the core clientele is a mix of young mothers glazed by sleeplessness and vape smoke; the elderly shuffling down the shampoo aisle pulling tartan shopping wheelies; and the ‘yoof’, here to cause mischief, in all their hooded exuberance. Well, let me put you straight. I am also a committed Poundland customer, even if I am called Arabella and wear a signet ring.
Like Brexit, horses and instant coffee, a bargain unites snob and mob. Poundland may not democratise, as the late Sir Terence Conran said of Habitat, but perhaps it unites in more subtle ways.
I have been a faithful patron of Poundland for many years. Occasionally, at certain points in the liturgical calendar, Lidl and Aldi have turned my head but never seriously. I always return to Poundland. Once, finding me on all fours trying to wrench a giant chocolate Paw Patrol figurine out of a Poundland pallet, my husband begged me to stop on the grounds of decorum. But I can’t. I won’t.
My bargain-hunting instincts will never be extinguished, for they are a peculiar imprimatur of class and cunning: a red line slashed theatrically through a Comic Sans pound sign, an aisle full of back-of-a-lorry slippers, Hobnobs and export-strength Calpol is all I really want.
And so, on this bleak November morning, I am walking the aisles on a journalistic mission. Granted £20 in expenses by the editor of this magazine, I am to produce a haul impressive enough to prove Poundland’s worth to Britain’s high streets. In keeping with the nominative determinism of the emporium, my purchases must be £1 only. Here, of course, I must address the great rhetorical flourish of all Poundland refuseniks: that not everything is in fact £1 and many of the products are priced at £1.50 or higher. Whatever. Such objections are born of ignorance. Anyone who has seriously put the time in at Poundland will find much to tempt them for a quid.
First up, toothpaste. No bazaar has ever offered such an array of dental emoluments – curious since many of my fellow Poundlanders appear not to have the full complement. I buy smokers whitening toothpaste and a special toothbrush to combat the stains I will no doubt increase when I get to the smoking accessory aisle (five lighters for £1).
On stains of the household variety, I find more than I could ever hope for: bleaches and emulsifiers of many descriptions largely available in a potent fragrance designed to make one think of the Levant. I open the Comfort fabric softener in Tropical Lily and nearly collapse. Nevertheless, into the basket it goes.
Like Brexit, horses and instant coffee, a bargain unites snob and mob
Running on fumes, I am at the confectionary aisle before I know it, a highlights reel of 1980s biscuits: Wagon Wheels, Blue Riband, Tunnock’s Teacakes and mint Viscounts in their distinctive luminous-green wrappers. Yes to all of it.
At some point after the detergent sniffing and attack of biscuit nostalgia, I lose track of my spending and start behaving in the way I imagine Poundland’s owners would want: I fling items, some even over £1, into the basket with gay abandon.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the children’s craft section where I am overcome with terrible guilt about my children not being with me (for they are die-hard Poundland devotees, too) and begin an act of mad overcompensation. I buy glittery Play-Dough (£2.50), a miniature umbrella emblazoned with a Disney character I have never heard of (£5) and, worst of all, a slime kit (£5).
Only Poundland can elicit this level of consumer emotion – I dare you to be similarly moved by Belazu chickpeas in Waitrose.
I do have my limits. I draw the line at the clothing range for women with its poor-relation activewear and rip-off Ugg boots. And I’m sure one has to be about 20 years younger than me to pull off the make-up range with its stern exhortations to ‘Slay Your Brows’ and ‘Dazzle’. And then, of course, there is food. Would I buy supper from Poundland’s ‘fresh’ section? I’m no stranger to an E-number but I think not. Others are less discerning – and good for them.
On the way out, I look for Denis and Barbara but they have been replaced by other employees, wordlessly fixing the scanners on the self-checkouts. Somewhere in the back of the shop, an argument breaks out over a dropped Christmas bauble. This is Poundland in 2026: belligerent, broken, a thing of beauty. But bust? I don’t think so.
Comments