BEFORE YOU GO
RETAIL RANDOMS
INCONVENIENT The world’s most inconvenient convenience store has been revealed, nailed to the side of a mountain in China. The approximately 12sq ft store sits a vertigo-inducing 120 metres up a sheer cliff face in the Shiniuzhai National Geological Park in Hunan province and, as the picture demonstrates, benefits from a healthy passing trade made up mostly of mountaineers and rock climbers. The store specialises in food-to-go. To be perfectly honest, it only sells drinks and snacks. Think more bottles of water and packets of crisps rather than Costa coffee and Rollover hotdogs though. And you can forget about buying a lottery ticket or paying your gas bill. It’s worth seeking out if you’re on a budget: a bottle of water will only set you back the equivalent of 24p.
STORE
Don’t book your flights just now though. According to Chinese state media outlet CCTV, the store, which
first opened in 2018, is currently closed due to the pandemic. Now, that is inconvenient.
C I G A M M O O R H S U M Do you suffer from sleeplessness, jitters and caffeine crashes? Then maybe it’s time to cast aside the coffee cup and give Moksha a whirl. Moksha is the brainchild of Chris Baker, who put a stop to his six cups of coffee a day habit and instead began experimenting with mushrooms. Yes, really. Tinkering with toadstools is not for the faint-hearted. Remember Nicolas Evans? In 2008, the millionaire author of the Horse Whisperer destroyed his kidneys and nearly died after mistaking the deadly webcap mushroom for the edible ceps variety.
Baker must know his artist’s conk from his elm oyster though. Not only does he still have a pair of functioning kidneys, but his fungi fiddling has conjured up “a delicious caffeine-free coffee alternative filled with mushrooms, adaptogens and anti-inflammatory superfoods”. Moksha is available to order now and is a snip at £32 for a 180g pack, good for 36 servings. Speaking of the packs, it looks like some mushrooms of the magic variety might have been consumed during their design.
WEDNESDAY 18TH MAY 2022/ ISSUE 105 / SLRMAG.CO.UK I 37
