Thursday 10 July 2008

New Stockists....MALIGAYA

Let me share with you how this came about...

I am not from Preston, and although it's only 30 minutes down the road from me and a far superior town centre to Blackburn it's not somewhere I generally spend my time; unless of course it's dark outside and there is beer involved. Never-the-less there is much more going on, being a city, and therefore a more likely place for the seed of Sock Horror to germinate. So, armed with all the wares I could assmeble, my assistant (who I couldn't have done without) and I descended on Preston for FRESH; The contemporary Arts Market.

Our presence was demanded at 8:30 on Sunday morning and we were slightly hung-over due to a raucous birthday bash the night before, quite why we had to be there that early is beyond me as that time on a Sunday morning doesn't exist for the majority of people. Needless to say we didn't see a soul (other that the other stall holders) until 10:30 when the rest of the town centre was open. However, as always we had numerous visitors to our stall who had so far been unaware of the doldrites as the reason for their laundry melancholy that were quickly educated and consequentially totally enthused with disseminating our story.

OK, so me and my good friend were feeling a little fragile and were taking it in turns to trudge to various establishments for life preserving supplies, so our next encounter took us by surprise...our of the blue a man appears at our stall, and speaking at a speed slightly too fast for our slow brains to preocess and slightly brusquer that our weak selves could respond to he demanded "when you're done come and see me; I have a shop around the corner - Maligaya" and then he was off.

Now I said our brains were slow, but the next few hours show me how painfully dim-witted we were. We instantly forgot the name of the shop (I'm very sorry...I was determined to call it Malachi for some reason), but we spent the rest of the afternoon in a quandary over what we had done to invoke the wrath of this man...had we parked in front of his shop? Were we obstructing something? So it was with some trepidation that we packed up the car and made our way round there. In we crept but he was nowhere to be seen - not to matter though because our eyes were instantly drawn to the abundance of wares to drool over. No joke, we were acting like a couple of pirates who found an abandoned cave filled with booty; piling item after item into our arms. The reason of our being there almost forgotten we made our way upstairs to be met by the man who visited our stall and was actually bearing one of the broadest smiles I'd seen in a long time.

The quick part of my brain deduced that we weren't in fact in trouble and after a little chat we determined that Maligaya actually wanted to stock Sock Horror. It turns out that one of the customers to our stall had subsequently paid a visit to Maligaya and had been so enthusiastic about Sock Horror that he had instantly run round to ask us to come and visit him, however, because he was short staffed he didn't have the time to introduce himself properly and consequently we got confused and interpreted his haste as annoyance.

Well, the upshot is that Maligaya are now proud stockist of Sock Horror creatures and publications and I am failing to find a deeper modicum of self-control having discovered a new establishment to spend my hard earned pennies in.

Maligaya is situated on Friargate in the heart of Preston and is open 7 days a week for your purchasing pleasure.