This is genuinely a bit ridiculous

[kaberett]

Things the tiny corner shops just over the road from my flat carry, apparently routinely:

• garlic Lurpak
  
• a flavour of innocent fruit juice that neither of the enormous 24-hour supermarkets on my way home does
  
• Kidderton Ash
  
• Little Black Bomber (not wildly over the odds)
  
• live yoghurt
  
• Swedish crispbread
  
• rose water (ditto at neither of the big supermarkets)
  
• string
  
• sink plungers

ET CETERA.

I am not entirely sure I understand London.

Comments

[kaberett]

I think I like it, I'm just baffled. (Also kind of baffled by the bit where the co-op around the corner - which is much smaller than the one I lived next to all last year, which didn't even have aubergines - carries like cassava and kohlrabi and that awful green spiked thing that noldo detests absolutely as standard.)

[sfred]

My impression is that London - maybe as a more pedestrian/public-transporty city than most in the UK? - favours little-and-often shopping in a variety of little shops (because there isn't room to build big ones), so there end up being weird specialisms.

[kaberett]

'cept my baseline is Cambridge, which is super-geared towards pedestrians and cyclists...?

[sfred]

Good point! My baseline is medium-sized cities in Northern England.