The General Trading Company is - or was - to nice middle-class girls like me what the Liverpool branch of Selfridges is to WAGs: the centre of the shopping universe. All those marvellous (and completely useless) leather pigs, splendid ethnic lamps, exotic rugs, stylish retro toys and interesting vases.

Despite my wedding list being there, it is years since I shopped at GTC (it’s thanks to them that as a result I now have a very large chocolate-brown sheepskin floor cushion and a pair of pheasant feather lampshades). In recent years it just got pointlessly expensive - thus alienating its core client base. It’s no good catering for Sloaney tastes if you’re charging Russian oligarch prices. The final nail in the coffin was the revamp of Peter Jones, the Sloane mecca.

It’s a shame, though. What will all those nice boys from minor public schools do for summer jobs?

What will happen to all the leather piglets? I shall be camping out overnight for the clearance sale.

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