At this sad time I’m trying to remember the last thing that I bought from Woolworths. I mean genuinely bought, before it was on its uppers and everyone was picking at its carcass like grinning hyenas on a wildebeest. Ah, yes: school-uniform labels and a pack of Disney Princess knickers (not for me: I find the glitter chafes). That was in August and involved a total spend of £7.25. So I can hardly complain if Woolies looks, at the time of writing, like joining C&A in that retail knacker’s yard in the sky.

Except that I am complaining. Woolworths was a store that I expected other people to keep going for my convenience. If I needed Sellotape or a chequered oven mitt, then I counted on it, obligingly, to be there. I’m not the only hypocrite. Everywhere, people seem to think their pic’n’mix nostalgia alone should have been enough to keep it afloat, and wail at the possible demise of an “institution”. This is like people lamenting the death of the “traditional English pub”, while turning their noses up at any premises that don’t have stripped floorboards, scatter cushions and a “chink, chink” ambience that says, “We’ve made it.”

Let’s face it: we became too aspirational for Woolworths. Brainwashed by the soft lighting at Next and Ikea, its shabby decor just wasn’t “feelgood” enough for our modern towel-shopping needs. I enjoyed its £5 Worthit! champagne deal last year, and have the broken nose veins to prove it. But I suspect it was a publicity gimmick and the store was never really going upmarket.

So, in a too-little-too-late gesture, I’m standing here, amid the crocodile-teary bargain hunters, trying to find something to buy. I know this is like bringing a relative you’ve never bothered to visit some grapes on their deathbed, but no time for regrets now. What to purchase? Pencil cases: mmm. We have 427 at home. Bathroom scales; a dinosaur with flashing eyes; £2 gravy boats; cow-shaped salt and pepper pots; socks. Yes, it’s all a bit random, like a weird pound shop, except dearer. Ah, a nylon school skirt knocked down to £3. That’ll do. And a box of Liquorice Allsorts.

For sentimentality’s sake, I go to the site of Britain’s first Woolies store in Church Street, Liverpool. It’s now, literally, a black hole – knocked down to make a walkway to the swanky Liverpool One “shopping experience”. How very symbolic. Everything changes. Woolworths was one of the few remaining places where you could buy a toilet brush and loose toffees simultaneously. Where you could bully kids into doing their homework by threatening, “You’ll end up working in Woolworths!” And one of the few stores where schoolchildren could shoplift jelly snakes and get away with it because the security staff were aged 93.

Ah, vanishing traditions: it really is criminal.

bargainhunter@thetimes.co.uk

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