I have history with retail sales, little of which is any good. I was ruminating upon my experiences of sale shopping whilst at the back of a queue for a Margaret Howell sample free-for-all outside a handsome red stone building close to London’s South Molton Street. 

I was at the back one of those Disneyesque serpentine queues with around 200 or so infront of me. A mixed bunch, mostly young but with a good proportion of rakishly thin sexagenarians – which sounds ironic when put into the context of a dear friend once dismissing this particular designer’s clothes as popular with people “who don’t have sex”. I didn’t take her barb personally. 

In fact, this was my second Margaret Howell sample sale my first being some 20 years ago in building around the corner. I remember it because I bought two pairs of well cut trousers that I wear to this day but also because I cycled there and while unpadlocking my bike with my purchases in a shoulder bag I was confronted by a middle aged man in a tweed suit clearly in some distress. Medium height with thinning hair and the look of someone uneasy with urban life he explained that he’d dropped his malfunctioning Range Rover off at the main dealer who had supplied it close to Heathrow Airport and had been given a lift into town for a meeting with his accountant. It was as his lift pulled away he remembered he’d left his wallet in the Range Rover having pulled to into a Costa Coffee drive through on his drive in from North Devon.  To make matters worse it being a Bank Holiday weekend he’d been informed the garage would close early and remain shut until Tuesday. He needed money: his mobile out of charge and he didn’t know how he was going to get home? In the notebook I always have with me I noted his his full name, home address with postcode and both the out of action mobile number as well as the one at home. Pushing my bike and discussing horse racing of which I know zilch we walked to a Barclays ATM in Hanover Square where I withdrew £50 that we’d assessed would buy him a ticket home and a cup of tea. 

Such a good day. Two cracking pairs of designer strides at the sort of prices you’d find in TKMaxx and a good turn for a gent in need in tweed. Only he turned out not to be much of a gent after all. He’d seen me coming, fabricated the address, the home number didn’t connect and calling the mobile merely extracted the ranting screams of a women evidently at the end of her tether. I’d made savings the day I’d been duped; just not as much as I’d initially thought.

Many in today’s queue doubtless seasoned sales shoppers who anticipating a wait had come prepared with paperbacks. When I cheerily suggested to the dark haired girl infront of me she should have brought something longer, maybe War And Peace, she threw me the sort of expression normally reserved for those who break wind on a train. To gain a brighter perspective I made a haphazard attempt to count how many were leaving the building over a five minute period and thus calculated that I should be at the front in an hour and a quarter-ish. I wish I’d brought a book too. Some sent partners off for coffees and sandwiches. All glued to their mobile phones.

I’d actually taken a book to an overnight sales queue forming outside a car accessory shop on the orange brick 1960s outskirts of Welwyn Garden City. Years ago there was a weekly classified paper called Exchange & Mart that comprised thousands of retails and private classified advertisements. It was an essential Thursday read containing everything from motorbikes to washing machines and caravans to car accessories. The ad that drew my attention was knockdown prices on a handful of prestige auto hi fi systems. Back then barely a year would pass without some low life shattering my car window and jemmying out yet another audio. The opportunity to buy a state-of-the-art removable auto hi fi was not to be sneezed at. 

It was about five o-clock when I arrived. Fourth in line, and by my reckoning sure to get a tasty Motorola; not the most heavily discounted top-of-the-range model but a piece of work all the same with a saving equivalent to a fortnight’s wages. Kim drove up in her aubergine Mini to provide with blankets, sandwiches, a flask of tea and a small portable television. She stayed long enough to reassure herself that I hadn’t completely lost my marbles then returning home to Bayswater. 

Being late spring it remained light until late. With a wealth of green space opposite our small parade of shops  we were evidently on the route to a from a pub somewhere in the distance to our right. My fellow shoppers watched as groups of friends strolled quietly to the distant right returning around eleven o’clock inebriated and rowdy. One group smashed the cash box in the telephone kiosk on the other side of the road. Jehovah’s Witnesses attempted to sell us their magazine and set us upon a less materially important path.

When the God squad had departed I learnt that number three in the shop doorway queue, unshaven with thick black hair and an east European accent, told me his hobby was church services. He aimed to have covered all of Essex’s churches, of every denomination, within the year having ticked off Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. London was next. It got him out of the house which pleased his wife. He said his favourites were the Methodists with a more “clubby” feel and less theatre. 

First in line said he often queued overnight like this selling his bargains for a profit in, you guessed it, Exchange & Mart. There were around a dozen of us by around midnight when a police patrol car pulled up to see what was going on.  The copper could’t have been nicer pointing out that if our cars remained on the yellow lines directly infront of the store after 9.30 next morning they’d be ticketed. 

The door opened at 9am sharp. I bought my Motorola and was back on the road in my orange VW Beetle passing two traffic wardens stood next to the trashed telephone kiosk. I installed the cut price audio that evening and enjoyed almost four months of music until someone took out the passenger side window and did a tidy job of removing the dashboard frame in addition to the actual unit that was tucked away beneath the driver’s seat. Out of sight but not out of mind.

I was reminded of that overnight queue in Welwyn Garden City some years later seduced by a handsome pair of brown Derby shoes at Church’s January sale at its Regent Street store. I can’t remember what I paid for them but I was delighted because such handsome footwear ( I still wear them to this day, maybe 20 years on) would normally be out of my reach. All I do recall is that the parking fine for leaving the car on Great Marlborough Street close to Liberty wiped out the saving and some.

Some have difficulty comprehending serpentine queues; that they should start at the back and not just drop in where they please. Where it’s easy for we Brits to go straight to the back of the line others, from more laissez-faire societies (think early trips to Paris or Amsterdam and the cafe free-for-alls), caused a stir by tagging on to the wrong lines.

My guesstimate proved to be on the button and after almost 75 minutes on the clock I found myself at the front of the sample sale queue facing a smartly dressed young man in sunglasses with an iPad and ear buds in near constant communication with someone inside. His task to admit an equal number of customers to those leaving the building with Margaret Howell carrier bags. He made an exception in my case upon realising I was alone and had travelled up from the south coast.

Inside was an oversized baggy dark blue, green and brown end of the world melee with more static queues for the changing rooms.  I asked a man with a Charles Bronson moustache in a black and white dogtooth overcoat what he thought of the shirt (brown naturally). He nodded approvingly and said I could adjust the top button. Upon which I paid and left.

I noticed an uncomfortable looking man in a tweed suit on the other side of the street as I left. He looked up and seemed, well, distressed.  I thought it best to get away while I was ahead.