In the bowels of (shopping) hell

The video above is the opening of Primark in Oxford Street last Thursday - the day when Police had to be called, the queues for the tills were 100 deep and the store had to adopt a 'one in, one out' policy.

A girl from work and I decided we would head down to the new giant Primark for a little browse after work, the aim to get our hands on some gold wedges we'd seen in a magazine. We had foolishly presumed that a week after it had opened, the pandemonium would've died down and we'd be able to stroll right in.

Oh, how wrong we were.

The queue just to get in snaked from the corner entrance, down the side of the building, right round the back of the building and back again. Inside, it didn't get much better. It was as though half of Oxford Street had descended in a co-ordinated attack on the Marble Arch end. We had originally planned to divide and conquer but even as a seasoned Primark scrummer (I survived the christmas time sequin dress delivery), I couldn't take it. There were no shoes on the display racks, instead they lay in mock-croc ballet pump puddles, meaning that it became impossible to move upstairs. After twenty minutes of trying to fight past people and witnessing the till queues that wove through the store, I gave up and went home empty handed.

And that almost never happens when there's Primark involved.