HETHER you are in need of four candles or fork handles, a bath plug or a pair of shears, there’s still a place in towns and villages across the country where you can be sure to find it. You’ll recognise it by the rows of bedding plants, towers of buckets and baskets of pegs spilling onto the street in front of windows packed with pans, crockery, brushes and tools. Inside, every available surface is stacked with bottles and boxes; shelves upon shelves of tins contain paint in varying hues of salmon, rust, moss and more shades of white than should surely exist. Hoses and watering cans hang from the ceiling, brooms and mops jostle in metal bins, reels of chains and rope span the walls and a counter has drawers bursting with a cornucopia of items to aid and abet our everyday lives.
