The branch of Woolworths on St John's Road near Clapham Junction station is closing down and I confess I have mixed emotions.

On the one hand it's such a familiar sight on the high street that its sudden absence will take a bit of getting used to. But on the other hand, during these difficult times for retail business and the economy in general, is there really a place for any shop that makes it so abundantly clear that it simply can't be arsed?

For instance, the window display often seems to be a work in progress, all boxes and no products. I have also wandered in to find the aisles in disarray and random items of stock scattered all over the floor and thought for a moment that I'd been accidentally permitted access during some annual stock taking, only to realise that it was a perfectly normal trading day.

And one of the last great puzzles left for mankind to solve following the successful mapping of the human genome must surely be to unravel the secret code behind Woolworths' stock selection.

Where else on the high street (or indeed anywhere) would you be able to buy a DVD player, some Pick 'n' Mix, a rubber plant, a multi-function vegetable slicer, a child's coat and a box of nails all under the same roof?

If there is some kind of consistent rationale to guide the decision to either stock or not stock a particular item then I would be very grateful if someone would share it with me. Because as far as I can tell you'd get a more internally consistent product catalogue if you asked a pigeon to choose the inventory by pecking at a long list of options.

Now you may see this 'creative' selection of stock as charming or even useful but I'm afraid I do not. Since Woolworths stocks such a random collection of products you can never be completely sure that the item you're currently seeking is not hidden away somewhere on the shelves. So I've wasted an awful lot of time looking for something which isn't there.

And that's the central problem with Woolies — the unwritten promise is that they could stock almost anything, but the reality is that they probably don't.

For instance, I can say with absolute certainty that The Carphone Warehouse won't sell candles, Boots won't sell Hulk action figures and Dixons won't sell lawn sprinklers. But Woolworths could very easily have all of these for sale in the same aisle. There may even be a special promotion offering a discount if you buy all three together.

If you're wasting so much time looking for products that Woolworths may or may not stock, I hear you say, why not just ask a member of staff to help?

Well, I might just as well ask a dog the best way to cook an artichoke or a newly-born baby for his view on the housing market. Because if there's one thing that Woolworths seems to do well it's to instil a consistent model of customer service in all of its staff, apparently based on the 3Is of ignorance, insolence and indifference.

Only PC World manages to create a more reliably appalling customer experience. Throw a stone into any crowd of people anywhere in the world and you've a better chance of hitting someone who knows about computers than you have in PC World. It is true to say that PC World has managed to raise the general level of computer literacy in this country, but only by removing from the pool people who know absolutely nothing about computers and giving them jobs in its superstores, thus slightly boosting the average ability of those remaining.

One of the keys to a successful retail business is to be able to reliably recreate the same shopping experience from store to store. Franchises like Subway and McDonald's do this particularly well. If I were advising someone setting up a new branch of Woolworths on how to recreate the instantly recognisable Woolworths experience I would say if you can make your customer service feel more like community service and your shop floor look like an inner city boot sale then you're 90% there.

For the last few Christmasses, Woolworths has run a fairly successful television campaign featuring two cheeky characters called Wool and Worth - a sheep and a sheepdog.

I have to confess that Wool and Worth consistently bring a smile to my face (who doesn't like a cheeky puppet) but there's a basic problem with them. They make far too much sense. A sheep paired with a sheepdog? That kind of logic can be found nowhere else in the Woolworths empire.

If the Christmas campaign truly reflected the incongruous spirit of Woolworths, Wool would be a dolphin, Worth would be a cactus, and they'd live in a hot air balloon.

But times move on and I will have to get used to the idea of there being no branch of Woolworths on my local high street. Rumour has it that a Waitrose will be built in its place. If true, this means I will have an ASDA, a Somerfield, a Sainsburys, a Tesco, two (!) M&S and now a Waitrose within five minutes walk of my flat.

I certainly won't be short of choice when it comes to restocking my fridge, but next time I'm in a hurry and I need a cheap toaster, picture hooks, an onion slicer, Buckaroo, cola bottles, A4 dividers, trellis, the new Coldplay album and a mini trampoline, I might find myself a little nostalgic for the big, red-fronted building that used to exist between SuperDrug and McDonalds.