The Chapel Kabin

The essential element to your local newsagent is friendliness. This is something I came to appreciate more when I lived in Salford due to various trips to the suspicious and paranoid Shalimar Newsagent. Not only is the thing boarded up and painted a strangely ominous green (now red, even more intense), but the eyes of the staff follow you all over the shop (a time when the phrase ‘all over the shop’ can be used literally) and make you feel dreadful for pawing a trashy mag or comparing potatoes.
The Chapel Kabin is also green, but far more sociable. You’re free to peruse and don’t feel on show, despite its tiny size. It has all the chocolate, fizzy drinks and sweets you could want but also a fridge with sandwiches and plenty of papers and mags to keep your brain ticking over. And they’re so nice and polite in there. It might have been a little further out of the way for me, just on the edge of Manchester’s town centre when in fact I lived closer to Ordsall and Castlefield, but I was always happy to trundle along the extra few streets for the quality of service. A smile and a ‘thanks, see you later’ go a long way and the Kabin really does feel as local as can be.

Walking along Chapel Street at 7.50 am is not my idea of a good time. It is pretty much dark, the few people about are scurrying the other way into Manchester and I am on my way to work.
Supplies — thats what I need for my day of receptioning. I waltz into the friendly looking Chapel Kabin — one of the only shops open at all and much preferable to the Autotrader newagent a little further up with the scary man with ponytail and doom laden headlines on the board outside.
Grab a Fanta Orange (its 20p more expensive in here but I don’t mind paying it to feel safe), ask for a Chup a Chups lolly and he gives me the total. Hand the coins over and grab my strawberry lollipop. But he hasn’t heard me ask for the lollipop! Much hilarity and apologies ensue as I actually pay for the lolly and I notice that the guy serving me is just as bleary eyed as me. A fellow non-​morning person, amazing.
So, for papers, drinks, chocolate and other essential supplies to bung in your bulging work bag pop by the Chapel Kabin and try not to steal anything.