Now you have to drive at least five miles (or ten if you live in the country) to an out-of-town mall and buy food from the southern hemisphere and goods made in the Far East. The impact on local patterns of employment has been a disaster. And in extreme conditions the mind-bogglingly complex and expensive distribution system breaks down.
Few villages now have a local shop. The last of the post offices are disappearing (thanks to Peter Mandelson). And (going off at a tangent) the government is still trying to frighten the country into accepting GM food - if any attempt is made round here to grow GM crops I will be joining the protestors in direct action.
Is it unrealistically romantic to hope shops can be relocated within communities? Or must we accept that people want (indeed need) to buy Kiwi fruits in January and thus must have the just-in-time St Vitus dance of modern retail distribution. You decide.
Here are a few village shops that are bucking the trend:
Above: the ideal of locally produced food locally sold. No airmiles, no doubts about provenence, no suspicians about animal welfare (you can see for yourself how the animals are kept). And as the overheads are low the prices are are extremely reasonable for the quality.
Above: cabinet maker. Handmade furniture that will last several lifetimes (and keep its value). No need for plastic doors and windows churned out by fly-by-night companies and sold by even more dubious companies.
Above: village blacksmith's forge. I suppose it is over-romantic to expect a return to the horse (although it would be nice to have some parts of the county out of bounds to the internal combustion engine, and to have LGVs restricted to certain routes and certain times). I would guess this blacksmith is working for love rather than money.
Above: incredibly the library system once extended to village communities. Long gone now. Even town libraries are under threat.
Above: interestingly, people (particularly children) still visualise villages as containing shops. Not sure that "community shops" are the answer. Family-owned enterprises have staying power.
The Culture of winterreise:
Music https://secure.wesleyclassics.com.au/library/images/MR301119.JPG
2 comments:
Interesting post. Here in the Ohio River valley the weather is also bitterly cold and roads were impassable for a couple of days. I live in a little crossroads, in England you might call it a hamlet?The old general store down on the corner is more of a deli or sandwich shop than a grocery. In the 1950's they had vegetables, meats, garden seeds, and even some hardware-the big box stores ended all that. The decade ahead may see daily life 're-localize' by necessity, not choice as our neglected infrastructure continues to deterioate. In the last two years more of my neighbors are gardening and keeping small livestock. Over the holidays they have asked me questions about gardening and food preservation as many of them are either unemployeed or underemployeed. There is some bartering among us, and there will probably be more in the coming years. I enjoy reading your posts to hear what is happening on the other side of the pond. Visited Britain twenty-five years ago, the villages and countryside were(and I hope remain)beautiful.
Pax,
Barry
Hi Barry,
I always thought a hamlet was a settlement without a church (but thinking about it, Thomas Gray in his Elergy in a Country Churchyard writes "each in their narrow cells forever laid the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep").
From a marketing perspective, the best way small shops can prosper is, among the generic goods they carry, to have a specialist section and to do it really well and to a level of uniqueness and enthusiasm the chain stores cannot match. B ut also I think the government should make the chain stores pay the full cost of their retailing operations including the environmental cost of haulage and the cost of blighted communities that are "hollowed out" through predatory pricing that deliberately targets small shops and destroys them.
Most depressing of all is the pointlessness of large supermarkets - as an "experience" it leaves you empty.
Regards,
Andrew
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