A1 Furniture

Now we’re talking! This is the kind of shop I love, and in this particular location on Albany Road, it really is the proverbial oases in the desert as far as I am concerned. Sadly, Albany Road is awash with estate agents, fast food joints, and non-​descript chain stores offering the bland to the banal… so there’s not too much to whet the appetite of someone with a hunger for something more original… (Clearly I say this with the exception of the Albany Gallery, Vision 21 and a couple of other important retail outlets on this road… it’s just that A1 Furniture faces a couple of dismal card shops and pharmacies, and is essentially surrounded by the shopping equivalent of fishing off the coast of Spain… or anywhere else that the Spanish fleets of commercial fishing trawlers have errantly managed to sling their hook… conjure scenes of Forest Gump fishing for shrimp in Alabama before the hurricane struck, and you’ll know what I’m driving at…)
A1 Furniture is a discount furniture centre tarted up to look like an upmarket architectural salvage yard, with it’s beautiful wrought iron gate and homemade sign… you see… that sign is enough to raise my spirits on a rainy day… doesn’t it just make you smile the biggest smile? It is becoming all too rare these days to witness such an oddity… the outline of the words hand painted in red, and then… Well… then nothing… They either didn’t have any more colours, or they remained unconvinced that they could colour in between the lines… that’s worth a smile in anybodies money!
And then there’s the name! Fabulous! I wonder if they could have possibly chosen it with a view to appearing first in every alphabetised business listing in the land? Mmmm, could it be so? A1 Furniture even beats Aardvark Furniture to the winning post! May be???