I first visited Bristol in the late Nineties, solely to go shopping with my sister.

Bristol had an Ikea and an American-style shopping mall making it, for us, the capital of the West Country.

We'd heard all about the Scandinavian megastore in the national press and, apart from market stalls and factory shops, there was nowhere within a 50-mile radius of home to buy affordable furniture.

My parents were convinced Ikea would be packed to the rafters with MDF rubbish but my little sister knew that if she wanted to shoot up the cool-teenager ranks, she needed Ikea – in fact, she needed Bristol.

I'd left home for university a few years earlier but my friends who had stayed behind still talked about visiting Plymouth or Exeter in revered tones. Both were more than an hour away and had proper High Street shops (Top Shop, in particular, had yet to make it to our neck of the woods).

My sister badgered my parents daily to take her to Bristol. Teenage girls in her year would purposely leave the labels hanging out of items from out-of-county High Street shops, to prove they had been there. My sister wanted some of that fame.

She remembers the first time she heard someone say they'd "Got it at the Mall" and the feeling of jealousy that had pinched the pit of her stomach.

So, my parents decided, for the sake of a quiet life, to take my sister to Bristol – and as my university town was just over an hour away, I agreed to meet them for the day.

In Ikea my sister chose a set of stacking boxes, my mum picked out a lamp, I think I left with a rug and my dad wandered out empty handed, horrified at the "wobbly wardrobes and rickety chairs" on display.

After Ikea it was off to the Mall for lunch and shopping proper – far easier to head out on to the M5 than find our way around a strange city. And my sister was going to get herself a Top Shop T-shirt if it was the last thing she did.

Coming to Bristol no longer holds the kudos among teenage girls that it once did, as thankfully the modern world has finally reached our home town and there are High Street labels (and designer ones) aplenty.

But one of my school friends now teaches at our old comprehensive and she said her pupils have been overheard boasting about their shopping trips to Bristol – although nowadays Top Shop is the last place on their wanted list. Apparently, taking your packed lunch to school in a Harvey Nichols white carrier bag is now the ultimate in schoolgirl cool.