Seeing this on the list makes me line up with those wondering just where these numbers came from. M&S is still the country’s biggest clothing retailer, but its last couple of quarterly business updates have shown sales are dropping and the company is losing market share, indicating (to me, at least) that the rebound sparked by the Per Una and Autograph lines has petered out.
M&S also is getting hit on the food side as well. Food sales at stores open at least a year fell about 1.5% in the company’s most recent quarter.
*Private Eye * and *The Spectator * are two of this American’s favorite things about Britain.
Intrinsically British (in addition to Jennyrosity’s excellent list (well, this is my list, anyway): healthy cynicism towards authority; low-grade xenophobia mixed with a national desire to move somewhere sunnier and warmer; sarcasm as the highest form of humour; bloody-mindedness; obsessive gardening; kebabs at 3am; curries at midnight; absolute lack of healthy boundaries when it comes to alcohol; love-hate relationship with public transport (we hate it, but still secretly think it’s better than almost anyone else’s); belief that we’re cooler and more self-aware than Americans, while lapping up everything American; collapsing state education system; absolute lack of awareness of the lessons of our own history; hand-pulled beer pumps; pork scratchings and scampi fries; eating fish and chips in a car parked by a windswept, drizzle-soaked beach; lying in a field while a plane drones overhead on a still summer day, while only ten minutes from the nearest town; shared collective nostalgia for cricket greens that not many have ever seen; newsprint that gets everywhere; HP Sauce; pickled onion-flavour Monster Munch; cheese-and-onion crisps as the fifth food group; flying duck ornaments; Madness’ Our House evoking childhood memories; half-hearted attempts to copy other countries (Wimpy); nothing to do on Sundays.