Hi, everyone and welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope. 欢迎回来【闲话英伦】. Hi 安澜.

Hi, lulu, hi everyone.

Now. I think we're gonna go a little bit more up market. We're gonna go to an area called Saint James.

Oh, by the way, 安澜, when you say up market that means the higher end.

Very high end.

就是更高端的. St. James, isn't that a park？

St. James is also an area. It's around Saint James’s Palace, so it's near Buckingham Palace. And it's near Piccadilly.

白金汉宫前面那一条大道旁边不就有一个公园是St. James’s Park.

Yes.

So you're gonna talk about the shops in that area.

Now most of the shops in this area have what we call a royal warrant.

A royal warrant. Let me guess it's warranted by the Royal Family?

YEAH. So it's warranted by the King, the Queen, and the Prince of Wales. So any company or any shop that sells products to the Royal Family can show a royal warrant.

Oh, I thought it was just approved by them, but this is literally they sell it directly to the Royal Family.

Yeah. So it means that for example the King shops at that shop.

You mean like he personally would go into those shops?

No, of course not.

I would think not.

No, they deliver.

They do delivery services.

Exactly.

Yon know, some European not like in England, but I've heard some European Royal Houses like the Royal Families, for example, in Scandinavian countries, the Queen or their Royal Family would literally just go down the street into the shops and say hi to the locals.

Yeah. Not in the UK. These shops around St. James’s is I would say mostly have royal warrants.

So I'm gonna talk about one or two of them.

Okay.

The first one is Berry Brothers and Rudd.

Let me guess Berry Brothers and Rudd , this just people who went into business, the pair of brothers Berry and then you have Rudd.

Now they sell wine spirits to the Royal Family.

卖酒的wine spirits就是烈酒.

Yeah. And you can actually go there and you can buy their own wine, their own champagne. It's can be quite reasonable. I looked on their website and you can buy bottles of wine around￡50.

Okay. So basically you can just go... it's open to public.

Yes, it is. But the higher end of these you're looking at maybe about￡50,000. And Berry Brothers and Rudd is also famous for its scales.

Scales, like weigh machine?

Yeah. That's because in the 18th and 19th century, originally they used to sell coffee and they had scales and when he stopped selling coffee, they kept the scales and essentially it became one of the only places in London where you could weigh yourself.

They're everywhere in China.

I know, but we're talking about 18th, 19th century. So noblemen, politicians, and even royalty they would go to the shop to weigh themselves.

In public?

Well, there was normally a private room where they can weigh themselves.

体重秤在那个地方。

And they actually sometimes show the books where they write down the weight of these famous people from history.

Ok. Why?

Well, it was a way of tracking to see whether or not they gained weight or lost weight.

So weird for a wine and spirit shop to do that.

But the thing that I love is that they also have an excuse column. So it will say things like this gentleman wore a very heavy coat or very heavy shoes. So if they gained a little bit of weight, they could say it's just the shoes.

I love these fun factoids. 我就特别喜欢这种小的完全没有意义的这种小知识小轶事. That's interesting. So you can, I guess, you can see the books online, you can find them online, the historical document.

Yes, you can find extracts from them.

I see, that's funny.

And the next one is John Lobb.

And it sells?

Shoes.

Oh shoes. okay

So John Lobb sells shoes to the King.

I bet they're expensive.

They cost over￡5,000, wow.

And they're all tailor made. And there's a waiting list for about 6 months for a pair of shoes.

So technically if we have money to burn, we as just common people, we can get on the waiting list and pay￡5,000￡6,000 and get a pair of shoes from John Lobb?

Absolutely. Or you can not pay as much and buy them on Taobao or Amazon which is what I do.

I definitely believe that.

So these are just some of the shops around the area, and if you wander around there you can see the coat of arms of the King or the Prince of Wales you can see them on the shops and that just shows that who shop there who shops there.

Coat of arms就是像家纹, 就是表示他那个家族的对吧？

Now the final area where we gonna go to is Knightsbridge Kensington.

Knightsbridge Kensington. I know that's a fancy area.

We're gonna go to the most famous of all the London department store. Harrods. So Harrods is, I would say pretty much the department store that everyone knows about in the UK, there are over 330 departments selling all kinds of products.

They're still considered high end, right？

Very high end

I know some tourists even if they don't want to splurge on anything, actually in Harrods they would want to get like a bag a shopping pack from the department store.

Yeah, it's pretty unique their shopping bags like a dark green, and you can even buy products that just say Harrods on them; and if I remember correctly, there's also a branch at Heathrow airport as well. So you can also buy that at the airport.

Now Harrods was famous for being able to buy anything that was requested. That was the whole idea. So no matter kind of how strange your request was, you could buy it at Harrods.

Okay. I guess back in the days probably people who are really rich like the nobility would probably shop there, right? Then they would probably have quite fanciful ideas.

Absolutely. So some people bought alligators, elephants there, so exotic animals. lions. Wow. But obviously now they stop doing that because that's illegal. But yeah, there was a famous story about someone who bought a lion from Harrods

And I bet they deliver to your door. Probably you don't even have to go to the shop and pick it up.

No. That's the whole point of Harrods. And if you're in London, I would say it's certainly worth just having a look. Yeah. And one quick tip as well. If you're feeling a bit peckish towards the later part of the day, you can always go into Harrods and buy a cut price sandwich.

A cut price sandwich, as in discount sandwich.

Discount sandwich because they make them fresh every single day. So when it gets to the end of the day, if you go to the food hall in Harrods, generally you're looking at much cheaper prices.

That actually is quite common now with like supermarkets mostly markets, a freshly made stuff or fresh stuff, if they pass a certain time there is a discount, like in Japan certainly so.

Yeah, I remember when I was a student in London, I would always go to Sainsbury's around 9 o'clock in the evening and just kind of pick up all of these very cheap food just before they threw them away.

Yeah, listen to 安澜you get a lot of money saving tips.

Absolutely.

So before we wrap up this episode, I just want to ask all of these shops you just mentioned obviously not the super high end the royal warrant but like Harrods like Selfridges these kind of places Oxford street, like local Londoners, do they actually go to these places to shop?

To be honest, not really not so much anymore. Most people just buy things on Amazon. But if you are in London, it's certainly worth going around exploring these shops. There's some really interesting stories and St. James is as well. The shops themselves are beautiful because they got original fixtures and fitting from the 18th 19th century. So these shops are actually really beautiful in their own right.

Yeah they're almost tourist attractions now.

They are. Sometimes I go into them but I always feel a bit embarrassed because obviously I know that I can't afford the things in them.

It's not that bad. I'm pretty sure you can afford a shopping bag.

Maybe. Maybe.

All right, and on that note we're gonna wrap up this episode, if you ever been in London, you like any of the shops or if you want to add shops onto this list or if any famous shops elsewhere. Leave us a comment in the comment section. Thank you, 安澜for coming to the studio.

Thanks Lulu thanks everyone.

We'll see you next time.

Bye.

Bye.