Left to my own devices in a DIY store yesterday – my interest in Allen keys and such is slight – I decided to try an experiment. I need to repot a houseplant, so was looking for a larger pot and also a plant pot holder. I found the necessary flowerpot, then took it to find a suitable PPH. None of what was available was big enough. I then decided to see just how many of the PPHs were the correct size to accommodate the flower pots on sale. Well, you have a choice between a small flower pot at the bottom of the PPH or the flower pot sticking out of the top of the item that is meant to conceal it. Some of the very attractive PPHs were not even large enough to hold the smallest flowerpot on sale. Does the buyer never get brain in gear and work out that if the store sells both types of pot, they must fit? I realise I probably left someone with a lot of rearranging to do, but if that sends any messages to anyone, I shall feel my messing around justified.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Hiya, Sheona – good to see you. Personally, I could spend all day and a shedload of money in DIY stores generally, so just think how we blokes feel when the ladies do much the same in dress shops and department stores, and much more often! The annoying thing about these identically themed megastores is, as you rightly point out, that they are not co-ordinated. Probably two different national buyers ordered the pots and the PPHs seperately, hence the lack of continity.
However, we must get you to love having ‘stuff’ in your shed or workshop and I suggest we start with a Portuguese village drogeria, which are still just like the old-fashioned hardware stores that used to be a feature of any UK town or village high street until the late sixties – a narrow shop front opening into cavernous, dark depths of shelves filled with all kinds of goodies. Whereas in B&Q you can now buy full body armour in the event of having to prune a tree, hi-vis jackets and safety goggles for when mowing the lawn and hard hats, vital kit when putting up wallpaper, in Portugal they will grind your chainsaw blades to razor-sharp efficiency for a couple of Euros, sell you enough skull-and-crossbone marked chemicals to wipe out half of the Alentejo and everything else from a vicious-looking and horribly effective rat-trap to all types of mattock, charcoal for the barbie plus five litres of accelerant, a tin of paint, a sack (!) of pea or bean seeds, fifty metres of chicken wire or a storm lantern. Best of all you can buy a single nut and/or a single bolt of whatever size without the inconvenience and cost of having to buy ten nuts and ten bolts in separate heat sealed plastic packages.
Oh, and the flowerpots and PPHs fit like gloves. 😉
OZ
Oops! Sorry about the HTML. The emphasis was supposed to finish after ‘drogeria’, but I have an upper case key sticky with pork fat, drool and cerveja and sometimes miss a keystroke that doesn’t ‘take’ properly. 😦
OZ
Sorted S 😉
Sticky mattocks to you too!
Still have them in Cyprus too – the one down the road from my daughter’s house was selling fancy panties before Christmas. Cypriot men don’t do women’s shops 🙂
‘Fancy panties’, eh? A description worth remembering although the blokes round here don’t much go in for them. They’re all still arguing about why a bra is singular and panties plural.
OZ
Janus – Sticky Mattocks sounds like it could be twinned with Slacky Bottom.
🙂
OZ
OZ, your drogeria sounds worth visiting. Obviously owned and run by someone with intelligence, unlike Focus et al here. There are still some interesting, independent shops in France, where you see item A in the window, go in and find a very mixed collection of other things, which can be very useful. Never found panties where I didn’t expect them though, Bravo.
We didn’t even buy an Allen key since they came in large boxes of 15, assorted sizes, at about a tenner. Have to find a good old-fashioned ironmongery.
It is not just hardware stores that don’t think things through, I feel. In clothing shops I sometimes find something I like, but there is absolutely nothing in store that would go with it. Then I ask an assistant, ‘What are other people wearing this with,’ and they have no answers.