Is there a Gap in the Bluewater market?

Blimey, have had a roller coaster of a busy week with two trips to retail emporiums, a new pink kitchen (well a third of it anyway), a visit to the lovely Tenterton - best children's play park in area, and um, lots of using the marvellous inherited dishwasher. Oh, and an actual night out - almost to see the new Dylan Thomas film but mistakenly did not book so had to go and drink some shots of bonkers juice in the Old town instead. Which was actually quite fun. And we discovered that there are four black cabs in Hastings. Which are actually cabs and you simply flag them down and they take you home. The poor cabbie was quite overcome with our enthusiasm for his vehicle that he admitted three other people this week had also been overly delighted with it.

Anyway - to the point. In Bluewater on Friday to buy jeans for lovely M (much harder than I could have ever imagined). But we went in to Gap. Now usually the staff jump on you hard, many times during a visit. And M just won't have it. But this time I convinced him we should talk to the staff, or members or whatever they are called, and get their help. Because frankly I was running out of opinions on shades of blue, and straight or boot etc etc. And just wanted them to do all the work.

But they didn't talk to us once. There was no one at the door. Three members of staff were lurking by the jeans section but despite numerous hints about help help help please they did not even look in our direction. They were chatting but not in an upbeat way. Sadly could not manage to actually hear the conversation as would have had to get extremely close, and that would have been weird.

Then there were not the right sizes in the right shades of blue or something, and still no one helped. Then even more shockingly, we realised that the piles of jumpers were mussed up. And not one member of staff had re-folded them. Even the shirts were not 'spaced*' out on the hangers (*old bhs term for having exactly same sized space between each hanger).

What does it mean? Is Gap over? Does Britain no longer need identikit jumpers, casual trousers, and thirty pound canvas bags. Is the era of the pasted striped sock over? I don't know, but in Bluewater it certainly is not at its best.