Shopping: It's the right way to handle the left

Lefties unite to affirm their retail rights

Next week, on 13 August, southpaws, skiffle-hands, gibble-fists, the kay-neived and the scoochy will gather together up and down the country to celebrate their left-handedness at the seventh annual Left-Handers' Day. The event is organised by the Left-Handers' Club which was founded in 1990 by Lauren and Keith Milsom (both left-handed, of course), the husband and wife team who, together with Reg Milsom (Keith's father), own Anything Left-Handed, the shop and mail-order company which caters to the southpaw's every need.

When it opened in the heart of Soho in 1968, Anything Left-Handed stocked just 40 items designed for use by left-handers, and not all of them were that useful. Victorian-style mugs designed to keep mustachioed males from getting tea in their whiskers, for example.

Thirty years on, the moustache mugs have been discontinued and more than 160 new products have been introduced to the shop and mail-order catalogue. Knives and scissors are a particular strength, which is not surprising given that before buying the company, left-handed Reg Milsom was a cutler and used to supply the original owners with all their blades.

Since taking over the company 15 years ago, the Milsoms have been working hard not only to provide excellent left-handed goods (computer keyboards, pounds 91; reverse-opening chequebook holders, pounds 2.99; files, pounds 4.99; and notepads, pounds 6.99) but also to raise public awareness of the daily frustrations faced by left-handers.

"I never really thought I had any problems with being left-handed," explains Lauren. "But I do remember handing in my first piece of work at school and the teacher throwing it away because it was completely back to front. But as for using scissors or a can-opener, I knew that I found them tricky, but I thought I was just clumsy."

That was until she tried her first pair of left-handed scissors. "The blades are arranged differently and at first I couldn't trust them; I was so used to the sensation of grinding the blades together. But now I would never expect anyone to use scissors which didn't match the hand they would naturally use." She also remembers her mother walking out of the room whenever she tried to cut bread. "I think it's more painful for the person watching. I just thought I was hopeless at slicing bread."

On Thursday Lauren hopes that left-handers will come along to the stands around the country and try out the left-handed knives, tape measures, rulers, peelers, can-openers and even their slightly gimmicky anticlockwise watches, and see how much easier their lives could be.

As well as being an opportunity to road test left-handed products, the event will give right-handers the chance to see what they have escaped: staff at British Telecom in Oxford will find their canteen has become a "Lefty Zone" for the day and various right-handed sports teams will find themselves up against the might of the left-handers in left-hand vs right-hand cricket, bowls, football and badminton.

Although this may sound rather light-hearted, the Milsoms insist that there is a serious message behind the otherwise frivolous activities. Lauren is constantly amazed by how little advice teachers are given on teaching left-handed children. "When you consider that there are 6 million left-handed people in Britain, and that primary school teachers will probably find that they have two or three left-handers in their classrooms, it is sad that they're not shown how to help these children develop their handwriting properly."

She goes on to point out that when children learn to use rulers or scissors they are invariably designed for right-handed use, which could account for the idea that some left-handed children are slower than their classmates.

Lauren has her own experience of the problems facing right-handed teachers dealing with left-handed children: although her son is left-handed like her and her husband, their daughter is not. Consequently the Milsoms have to think twice about everything they do to help their four-year-old, from lacing shoes to laying the table.

They have drawn up a fact sheet specifically on teaching left-handers to write. The shop also has books on how to teach young left-handers in general.

And for anxious parents who fear that their left-handed progeny will interpret any special treatment as a backhanded way of suggesting that they are inferior to their right-handed classmates, Anything Left-Handed has recently launched a Genius range of fountain pens. There are currently five to choose from and each one is named after a gifted gibble-fist: Picasso, Da Vinci, Carrol, Escher and Michelangelo.

For details of the Left-Handers' Club (annual membership, pounds 9.95; pounds 7.95 if you join before 30 September), Left-Handers' Day events or for the fact sheet, contact Anything Left-Handed, 57 Brewer Street, London W1R 3FB (0181-715 1594). For mail order, call 0181-770 3722.