Retail diary: Asda turns avocado match-maker

The unknowable knick-knack

Toy shops are known for selling all sorts of weird and wonderful items – but for one shop in Texas an item is on sale that baffles the staff more than it delights the customer.

Spotted by one eagle-eyed tweeter, the staff of this store have put a sign next to one of their products imploring shoppers to identify and buy the item.

“We honestly don’t really know what these are,” reads the hand-written label, which goes on to say the shop didn’t order the item or know who is sending it.

“Please buy them, we want them gone. We don’t know what’s going on. We have thousands of them. Help” the note pleas.

That’s one way of shifting excess stock.

Are you avo-ing a laugh?

Millennials’ obsession with avocados has reached new heights as young lovebirds have begun using the instagrammable fruit to store and present their engagement rings when proposing.

Asda has jumped on this trend and introduced a ‘perfect for proposal’ sticker system to avocados in its Clapham branch.

The grocer has even asked the branch’s avocado expert – what supermarket is complete without one? – Adrian Kurzynski to come up with a rating system ranking the suitability of its avocados for popping the big question based on their colour, complexion, cut and creaminess.

Let’s hope Asda staff aren’t subjected to cleaning up guacamole if the big question backfires.

Selfridges turns patron

Selfridges is providing funding for art to be displayed outside the new Elizabeth Line station at Bond Street, just across the street from the department store.

The large-scale work, by British artist Darren Almond (pictured), is designed to create a gateway to the West End. It takes its theme from the transport network and will be located in the station’s western Davies Street ticket hall in the spaces above and around the escalators.

Almond said: “I hope that my commission will address the space and passage of time and will activate, and hopefully stimulate, the inherent narratives implied by descent and ascent, by arrival and departure.”