Alphabet Soup

Fabulous treasure trove with extremely helpful owner. There is something in here for everyone, let's keep the high street in business. We'll be back

Great little shop, so lucky to have in our high street. Just ordered off their website & used their lockdown Click & Collect service which worked perfectly. Thank you :-)

My husband, my two children and I had a very unpleasant experience at this shop after a lovely afternoon at the Roald Dahl museum and lunch at the high street.

We entered the shop to purchase a birthday card for my mother, with my older son, who is visually impaired and who wears tinted glasses entering first. Due to his visual impairment, he looked around the unfamiliar shop, finding his bearings and started to look at cards on a carousel, spinning it around. I had barely even begun to look at anything in the shop when my husband and I heard the store person sternly and unnecessarily abruptly tell my son to stop spinning the carousel despite the fact that he was not doing so vigorously in any sense of the word. My son didn't realise who she was referring to, due to his visual impairment as he was just being randomly barked at from a distance. My husband intervened to ask him very gently to stop, which my son did immediately.

What was further upsetting was that we saw her shake her head at my son and roll her eyes in clear disdain. Due to the attitude of the woman, I felt very uncomfortable staying in the shop and decided to leave, which she encouraged us to do by saying thank you and good bye! My son was also left upset and hurt afterwards, when he was not causing any trouble. As we left, I decided to point out her rudeness, though she insisted my son was about to topple the carousel over, which was completely untrue as I and my husband were watching him and there was no safety issue whatsoever. She continued to argue, however, as I tried to explain there was no danger regarding the carousel falling.

The rude manner in which she had addressed my son made it clear that his safety was certainly not the reason for her aggressive reaction. I finally had to turn and leave as she was not listening to reason. It was a disappointing part of a wonderful day in a family orientated town, that had been incredibly welcoming to the children up till that point.