I have heard it all now. Today, in an effort to see if a larger crotchet hook would help in my vain attempt to learn to crotchet, I walked miles to a nearby village with a lot of second hand shops.

Surely, I thought, they will have loads of that sort of thing going for a song.

Apparently not. I was informed by one of those ladies that works in that kind of shop that they are "not allowed." Nor apparently are knitting kneedles. Is there a knitting needle was somewhere I do not know about?

And why can they sell pencils and not ..Oh just realised I did not see pencils either.

It seems their pointy ends have relegated them to a new classification as "weapons."

The mind boggles. Crotched Canons? Knitting kneedles at dawn. Klashnikov knitting kneedles? Knitting kneedle wars?

Has common sense finally flown out of the UK window. Apparently not everywhere as Oxfam still have them, but probably not for long.

I did get a crotchet hook in the material shop where they were carefully placed with scissors behind the till so that you could not see them.