Here's a picture of a closed-up tobacconist and newsagent. It is a few hundred yards from the thronging market in St Ives but it might as well be on the Moon. I wonder when Mr E. H. Deer last shuffled behind the counter in a holed, fawn, zip-up cardigan, baggy trousers shiny from too much ironing and slippers? Would he also have been unshaven and unkempt, with grubby specs perched on the end of his red, hairy nose and his hands and fingers black and smelly from handling, one after the other, jars of vile weed, gaspers, fag papers and old briars, coltsfoot rock and 10 bundles of the Daily Sketch or Sunday Express? I suppose it says as much about unseen changes in English provincial life as it does about altered personal habits. Who do you know who would go out for a paper and a quarter of ready-rubbed on a dreary, cold, miserable, dark December Saturday afternoon when they could sit at home with Sky Sport, the internet and cans of lager from the supermarket? Only young people smoke now, after all, and they'd never be seen dead in such a place. Are there actually any little tobacconists left? I can't remember when I last saw one, but I've seen plenty closed. They will just be left to rot: the locations are unattractive to newer businesses and the cost of stripping out all of those grimy, fetid, decaying shelves and display cases and putting in modern plumbing and lighting doesn't make sense unless the location is going to pull people in. Such places are typically just on the edge of town centres - 50 yards closer and they'd be worth taking on. It seems to have happened all of a sudden, though it must have been going on for 20 or 30 years and we just haven't noticed. What we demand in our town centres now are taxi offices, estate agents, building societies, pound shops, pizza places, home furnishing "boutiques" to sell us vases of honesty and lampshades we take a fancy to. Mr Deer = victim of specious modernity.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Forlorn on market day
Here's a picture of a closed-up tobacconist and newsagent. It is a few hundred yards from the thronging market in St Ives but it might as well be on the Moon. I wonder when Mr E. H. Deer last shuffled behind the counter in a holed, fawn, zip-up cardigan, baggy trousers shiny from too much ironing and slippers? Would he also have been unshaven and unkempt, with grubby specs perched on the end of his red, hairy nose and his hands and fingers black and smelly from handling, one after the other, jars of vile weed, gaspers, fag papers and old briars, coltsfoot rock and 10 bundles of the Daily Sketch or Sunday Express? I suppose it says as much about unseen changes in English provincial life as it does about altered personal habits. Who do you know who would go out for a paper and a quarter of ready-rubbed on a dreary, cold, miserable, dark December Saturday afternoon when they could sit at home with Sky Sport, the internet and cans of lager from the supermarket? Only young people smoke now, after all, and they'd never be seen dead in such a place. Are there actually any little tobacconists left? I can't remember when I last saw one, but I've seen plenty closed. They will just be left to rot: the locations are unattractive to newer businesses and the cost of stripping out all of those grimy, fetid, decaying shelves and display cases and putting in modern plumbing and lighting doesn't make sense unless the location is going to pull people in. Such places are typically just on the edge of town centres - 50 yards closer and they'd be worth taking on. It seems to have happened all of a sudden, though it must have been going on for 20 or 30 years and we just haven't noticed. What we demand in our town centres now are taxi offices, estate agents, building societies, pound shops, pizza places, home furnishing "boutiques" to sell us vases of honesty and lampshades we take a fancy to. Mr Deer = victim of specious modernity.
4 comments:
It won't be long before it is a Tesco mini-mart. I thought you were on holiday?
At home and a few days out. Skint.
Ah, hence the blogging. Papers pay dreadful salaries, I do commiserate. And everywhere is cutting back too, bringing the hatchet man in, as I suspect you well know.
Yes, I've managed to escape the culls so far...but one day I'll be pushed to the edge of the herd, the way we all are, and the long brown envelope will arrive. Another 10 years maybe, get the kids through university and pay off most of my mortgage. A man can dream.
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