Poundland -- I've seen the light!

All this for £9...

When the Woolworth's on our high street closed, the shop space was empty for a very long time and it felt as though it was dragging the whole town down. Then, at last, the site was split into two smaller shops and both opened. One was a Peacock's, which closed about a week after it opened when the chain got into difficulties. The other was a Poundland, which filled me with despair as it didn't feel like the right sort of shop for the town. I only went in it once, last November, to look for things to put in the kids' advent calendar and it was depressing. I vowed never to set foot there again.
     Then... yesterday I was catching up with all the blogs I follow and saw Sue's fish slice challenge. I find it hard to resist challenges, specially arty ones, but that meant going back to Poundland to purchase said fish slice (the challenge is to transform it -- Sue does amazing things with enamelling and cutting).
     Mentally pinching my nose, I stepped back inside the scorned shop. The first things I saw were some cool Royal Family masks for the Jubilee. I'm no royalist, but I found myself thinking, 'Hmm, those would be a good bit of ephemera to buy and store away for 100 years' time...'. Then I saw a very nice stripy tea towel in the colours I particularly like. Then three packets of ibuprofen for £1. Then I found the metal utensils for Sue's challenge -- a set of 3 for £1. Surely just the metal is worth that? (Oh no, now I'm suddenly having dark thoughts about the cheap labour that makes all these things -- that wasn't part of the planned post...)
     It suddenly seemed as though I was no longer in Poundland but in a specially created Janestore, stocked with items uniquely suited to my tastes. In the weird selection of CDs I found two I liked. In the even more random selection of books was a perfect book for me by an author whose book on the Rolling Stones is next on my bedside pile. Then, finally, I grabbed three huge packets of plastic straws, just because the colours were so beautiful -- in my mind art projects spiralled out like kaleidoscope patterns.
     All this for £9 -- it doesn't seem possible. So although I know it was just the chance coming together of my profound randomness and Poundland's randomness to make a happy moment, I won't sneer at Poundland too readily in future.
     And why don't you join in with the Fish Slice Challenge? It could go viral...