The Pom Shop

I know a pom called Cate. She told me about The Pom Shop at Bondi Junction. It's not really called The Pom Shop, it's called "A Taste of Home", but everyone calls it The Pom Shop. I think they should change the name.

Cate says that The Pom shop stocks proper Dairy Milk. That's enough for me, so today I took myself down there to investigate.

We've noticed little sections of British food in Coles supermarket, especially the one at Bondi Junction, which funnily enough is just round the corner from The Pom Shop. Coles clearly think there's a market for this sort of thing, but the things they stock in this section are odd. I went in there today with my notepad especially to report back, which, as you can imagine, attracted a few funny looks from the staff.

The British section in Coles is currently stocking:

Walkers Oat Cakes
Rocky biscuit bars
Marmite
Silver Shred marmalade
Hartley's jam
Lyle's golden syrup
PG Tips
Paxo Stuffing (with a special promotional sticker encouraging "go on, try it!")
Colman's mustard
Processed peas
Bachelor's mushy peas
Hellman's mayonnaise
Robinson's lemon barley water
Homepride tinned curry sauce
Heinz steamed sticky toffee pudding

Having gathered this information I went round to The Pom Shop to speak to the owner, Andrew. Actually, he wasn't the owner, he was the owner's best mate. He'd been given the opportunity to own half the business but thought it was a mad idea so didn't give up his day job. Now he's working for his mate, who I presume is mucking about on the harbour in a boat. I wrote it all down in my notebook so felt I owed him an explanation about the blog.

It's a small shop with no air conditioning, yet has a whole wall of chocolate, most of it Cadbury's. I stood in front of it all, looking. It was like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. "Is this real Cadbury's, from the UK?". "Oh yes" he replied, realising that this is an issue to be taken seriously. "It's the real stuff. We ship it here in containers".

"How come it doesn't melt?" I asked. "It's really hot in here".

"The turn-around on that shelf is three days" replied Andrew. What he means is, he re-stocks the entire wall of chocolate every three days. A pommie girl came in while we were talking and made off with three creme eggs and a packet of Quavers. He should have given up the day job. A small box of Weetabix costs $12 (£5)

There was a map of the UK on the wall. Visitors to the shop have placed a circle on where they come from. The West Country is under-represented, but not the north west. The north west part of the map is full of little circles. We have higher standards there.

"So where are you from originally?" I asked.

"Oh you wouldn't know it, it's a small place"

"What's it called?"

"Widnes"