Fake 175

This on a visit to Homebase, the store which used to be part of the Sainsbury's family, the the Wesfarmer/Bunnings family of Australia. According to Wikipedia, presently owned by the Hilco of reference 3, who are presently trying to get rid of it. On a visit to inspect their floor covering range, with our kitchen in mind.

What we wanted was the sort of bouncy lino that you can drop crockery onto without breaking it. The sort of stuff that comes in large rolls and costs getting on for as much or more as carpet, say £30 or more a square metre. When we were last in the market, it was various patterns and textures, more abstract or geometrical than birds and beasts, rather in the way of a carpet. Whereas now, it was mainly faking up either wooden planking or ceramic tiles, with the snap above being a sample of the latter. There were some other patterns but not many, at least not in this store.

You could also buy fake wooden planks, made in short lengths of some sort of complicated composite involving built-in underlay and which just clicked together in the way of Lego. No doubt there would be assurances about the clicking together being durable and waterproof. Cutting the planks in around the sides of the space no problem at all...

On the way out, we were offered fake logs, logs which appeared to have been made out of wood chips, lightly pressed together. I thought that they were very expensive at near £10 for three of them: I would have thought that a serious open fire could easily get through a dozen a night, not counting the damage to the planet. I also thought that they might be the sort of thing burnt in the better class of power station, the ones that are trying to make their image over by burning renewable wood rather than fossil coal.

[CONSERVATION NORTH/BULKLEY VALLEY STEWARDSHIP CO: Panorama has found that Drax has taken whole logs from rare, "old-growth" forests that have been cut down by timber companies]

See, for example, references 4 and 5, from the first of which the snap above has been lifted.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/02/fake-174.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebase.

Reference 3: https://hilcoglobal.com/about-us/. Possibly what used to be called asset strippers. Who remembers about Jim Slater now?

Reference 4: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68381160.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/boreal-landscapes.html.

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