The night-walkers of Uganda

Welcome to UK’s poshest veg shop
Level 1
Elementary
Key words
1
Find the information
2
Look in the text and find the following information as quickly as possible.
How old will Charles be at his next birthday?
What is the name of his wife?
What is the name of Prince Charles’s country house?
How much does the expensive vase cost?
How much does a bunch of leeks cost in Charles’s shop?
How much does a bunch of leeks cost in the supermarket opposite?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
312

---

Welcome to UK’s poshest veg shop
Prince and duchess launch latest royal business 
venture – and rival retailers say they don’t mind 
at all.
Steven Morris 
March 18, 2008
Prince Charles will be the next king of England. 
He is also a businessman and a champion of 
the environment. And now he is probably also 
the poshest greengrocer in Britain. Charles has 
opened a shop called Highgrove (the name of 
his country estate) on the main high street of his 
local town, Tetbury. It is the latest in the prince’s 
list of businesses, which have earned millions of 
pounds in profit over the last few years.
In the Highgrove shop, the prince will sell 
everything from fresh vegetables from his country 
estate to apple juice from his wife Camilla’s 
orchards in nearby Wiltshire. There will be jams, 
jellies, chutneys, honeys and mustards, as well 
as handmade biscuits and chocolates. But the 
thousands of visitors, tourists and shoppers that 
will come to his store should not expect to find 
cheap prices. For example, a vase marking the 
prince’s 60th birthday later this year costs £395. 
You could also spend £30 on a pair of gardening 
gloves or for £45 you could buy a bird box. The 
best thing to buy might be a collection of Prince 
Charles’s drawings which costs just £6.95.
A small crowd came to the official opening. 
Charles and Camilla also came but there was 
no official ceremony. The royal couple chatted to 
the staff, met a few local people and had a look 
round the shop. “He doesn’t really look like a 
shopkeeper, does he?” said Steve Gray, one of 
the people in the crowd. “Why is he doing this? 
He doesn’t need the money and a member of the 
royal family running a shop seems a bit strange.” 
Some people might think the prince is doing it to 
promote the Prince Charles brand name. Others 
say that Highgrove in Tetbury is the first one of 
a chain of stores. Members of Charles’s staff 
say that this is not true – but they do say that 
he is thinking of exporting some of the food he 
produces on his estate. 
The advance publicity says that the shop reflects 
Charles’s interests. So the first things that the 
visitor sees when he or she enters the shop are 
chinaware and stationery designed by a student 
at the prince’s School of Traditional Arts in East 
London. And the wooden boxes for storing the 
chutney are made by people learning skills in 
one of the projects Charles supports. But for 
most people the highlight is probably the organic 
vegetables. There is no greengrocer in Tetbury 
so the people of the town are very excited that 
they will be able to buy Charles’s vegetables at 
his new shop. 
The prince’s florist, Sarah Champier-Lowe, said: 
“When people came to the shop before the 
official opening they were most interested in the 
vegetables.” In truth, the vegetable prices were not so 
expensive. A bunch of organic leeks from Highgrove 
costs £1.35. A bunch of leeks from the Netherlands 
was £1.10 in the supermarket opposite. 
Members of the prince’s staff say that any profits 
from the shop will go to the prince’s Charities 
Foundation, which manages the money which his 
social enterprises generate. Most shopkeepers 
in Tetbury welcomed the new business. A few 
metres from Charles’s shop, David Herbert, who 
has a food and drinks shop, said: “Everybody 
tells me my business is going to suffer. It’s 
not – it’s good for the town. We will all benefit. 
The shop will bring more visitors to the town.”
Chocolate shop owner Hortensia Oates looked at 
the prices of the food in Charles’s shop. “I must 
say that his prices are quite competitive,” she said.
Butcher John Newman sells beef from Charles’s 
estate. “This will bring more people to the town 
so that’s good for us.” The shopkeepers don’t 
want to criticize their royal neighbour – this town 
likes the royal family. When Charles and Camilla 
left the shop yesterday, Camilla shook hands 
with people in the crowd – and recommended the