T-shirts & tote bags for the supermarket

I wanted a T-shirt to wear at the supermarket, and one thing led to another, and now FBEL has a shop: tostadora.co.uk/fbel/ (link). It is first and foremost a manifestation of my desire to defend myself, and create a “shop” is what I have had to do. If people want to partake, all well and good.  In fact, Tostadora allows any customer to customise a design on an item of clothing, and there appears to be other sites that do the same, so people can invent for themselves. It strikes me that people would do much better by themselves in investing in their courage rather than, for instance, crying off to a doctor (volunteering into the system) to get a sick note exempting them from wearing a mask.

So, here is the rationale: now that we are living in a time when UK Government pressures people to act against their will, if there is no other way to defy it then there must be a way to indicate that one is acting under protest. Above all else – and this is the primary issue – in the context of a society where UK Government is essentially preying on a tendency to be polite, there needs to be a way of inserting a message right into the heart of that social interaction which won’t create a pretext to be excluded from it.

About the product: original designs are for a plain, men’s t-shirt, but in the shop you can alter the order, and get a version for women, and in different sizes and colours and styles of shirt (the lettering doesn’t change colour accordingly, so avoid black and very dark colours – but you’d work that out for yourself).

I have ordered a couple of T-shirts myself, and I was very happy with them. The material is not flimsy, and is good quality. It looks and feels nice. The first time I ordered I used the free shipping, but I didn’t realise that it was coming from Spain, and the long way around, so it took three weeks to arrive after it had been manufactured. However, one can pay for a speedier delivery, which I used the second time I placed an order. The t-shirt arrived in a matter of days.

The price for T-shirts start at £15.45. Slightly cheaper tote bags are also available (please do not choose the black version, for the same reason stated above).

Please note that I have not yet ordered a sample of the bags, so I cannot report on their quality. This is something that I will be able to do in March. I have also newly created a “Jail the 77th” design which I won’t be able to order for myself, again until the end of February; if you want to buy one of those, it should be a case of what you see is what you get, but I cannot report, at this time and as I would like to, on how that product looks in real life.

Tostadora is responsible for the printing and despatching, so any sort of problem in that area must be directed to them.

P W Laurie

Update 13/3/21: Took delivery of a tote bag and a T-shirt yesterday, and very happy with both. The “Jail the 77th” design looks like it was intended – as the image shows (the creases from being folded in the packing are left in for the sake of authenticity).