Preparations for my holiday are moving at a frantic pace right now. New suitcase bought? Doing it Thursday; Travel insurance sorted? Doing it Thursday; Toiletries? Thursday; Unnecessary purchase of some ‘holiday clothes’ even though I have perfectly adequate ones already? Etc

Given my recent (what can only be described as) perverted obsessions with clothes folding you would think I wouldn’t be able to contain my packing. The observant amongst you would have noted that a suitcase is somewhat of a prerequisite for packing. True enough, but I’m not above fashioning a cardboard model of a case, using measurements gleaned from a website such as Argos (luggage section), Debenhams (luggage section) or Marks and Spencer (luggage section). I could then practice packing with the model. I’m not going to but, I’m going to just do it quite late on Thursday when I’m pretty tired.

I don’t trust these shops that have very specific names. There is a whisky shop in Manchester now. Tie Rack was one of the first chains to do this. I prefer a less precise name. I’m pretty sure Tie Rack does scarfs and handkerchiefs so, apart from anything else, the shop is misrepresenting itself. Misrepresenting itself AND admitting it has a stupidly precise name. It should be called something like Things People Wear around Their Neck Rack (its website would add dotcom to the end – http://www.thingspeopleweararoundtheirneckrack.com).

Accessorize did it well. Why can’t more people name their shops like Accessorize? “Well it’s for selling accessories. Bangles and bracelets and earrings. Shall we call it earrings? Yes, that’s a good point. Thanks for raising that point Joyce, people wouldn’t think to go in a shop called earrings unless they were looking for earrings. We need to be the next level up. Accessorize it is.” Read that out, it was a (hypothetical) conversation that will take you a few seconds to read.

It probably took a think tank of 30 ‘specialists’ about five months to come up with Tie Rack. No doubt several dissenting voices were ignored in the room, “what about the products that aren’t ties?” etc.