Hectors

I used to visit Hectors quite a lot when I was younger. It is host to some of the best bargains in the city, though it really depends what they have in at the time to know what your bargain will be. My mum used to have a look in this place when she was looking for things for around the house. Things like cooking utensils and household bits. They have sold most things you could think in their long 20 year history. A family run business that knows how to treat its customers, Hectors deserves its standing in the community in North Belfast.

Hectors is an amazing little shop. It’s a family run business, with several generations always manning the til. They sell pretty much everything they can. There’s kitchenware in one corner, school books in the next. It’s a tiny little place but the make the most of the space by filling every centimetre with something to sell. Everything is also really cheap and most products are brand names so you always find little bargains that would cost three times as much in the supermarket. I’d watch out for any sweets or chocolate they are selling as usually they got it that cheap due to its ever increasing closeness to its sell by date. If I ever need a bargain or to save a few pennies, its the first place I look.

I have so much affection for this wee store. Some of my earliest memories are of going to Hectors and begging my Mum for a toy. It’s basically like a pound shop without the ‘everything’s a pound mantra’, even though it is dirt cheap. The same people who run it have been there for about 20 years; they’re literally part of the furniture. It would be a shock to the system if you walked in one day and they weren’t there; I’d probably die off. Anyways, it’s grimy and dark inside, but it’s cheap and it sells everything you could possibly need. I think you need to be from North Belfast to appreciate its’ ‘amazingness’.

There really is something very comforting about Hectors for me. I know that may sound strange to some people, but it’s been part and parcel of the Antrim Road since I can remember — it was somewhere my Mum went when I was little to get all the household bits and pieces, the place I went to get those items when I first moved into my flat. They sell everything from mops and brushes, to bleach and window cleaner and cloths and clothes pegs. They are much, much cheaper than the usual larger brand chain stores for these sort of items, so it’s worth going although it can be hard to get parked outside what with the main Antrim Road being so busy.