A fisful of change at the shops

A recent day out reminded me how much the retail experience has altered during my lifetime – and it’s not all good.

I could stop typing this, and buy a fridge, in a matter of seconds. The shops are shut and it’s 9pm, but I could still place the order and arrange delivery. I haven’t got to wander round a white-goods retail emporium trying to work out which slightly different version of something that keeps my cider cold is better. It’ll be cheaper, too.

But in amongst the convenience, endless choice and bargains, we’ve lost some of the personal, human, touches that used to make a trip to the shops something more than just a daily chore.

Last weekend, we visited a local coastal town. Amongst the shops selling over-priced imported home accessories (who doesn’t need another roughly-hewn wooden heart, poorly painted and a bargain at £10?) was one that looked different.

It’s window allowed you to see in, rather than being plastered with stick-on graphics and special offers calling beguilingly. Through this expanse of unexpected clarity, it was possible to see large, unfamiliar, areas of floor, the modern trend for cramming shelving in seeming to have passed it by.

The door wasn’t a modern all-glass thing, but old and painted, decades of gloss blurring the divide between glass panels and timber. A step back in time occurred when crossing the threshold.

A random mixture of tins, packets and jars were laid out sparsely on the few shelves, themselves hand-made many years ago, rather than manufactured and installed by a crack team of shop fitters.

A low, refrigerated, cabinet ran the width of the shop at the back, with cheeses laid out with comfortable spaces between them. Some of the walls and shelves of the store had cups and saucers, and old kitchen items on them – purely for decorative purposes, rather than the modern need to ‘pile it high, sell it cheap’.

Once we had selected items, the polite, elderly, lady at the counter checked the labels on the packets (no barcodes!), wrote the prices on a piece of paper, then expertly added them up and give us the price. A tenner changed hands, and without the aid of a till, correct change proffered. She even did something I’d long forgotten, giving us the small change first and counting up to the next pound, then the pound coins to make the round figure.

It was the weekend. No-one else came in the shop whilst we were there. I can only assume the lady must own it, as I can’t imagine she could be making anywhere near enough to pay rent.

As we left, I had to check over my shoulder to make sure the shop was still there, and I hadn’t just imagined it.

We don’t ‘do’ shops like that any more. And even if I can buy something online, in my pants, in the middle of the night for less money, I’m still the poorer for that.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column in the North West Evening Mail on the 11th of April 2014. You can view it on the paper's website here. The only alteration made this week was to the title, which they changed to 'Sold on the old curiosity shop' - fair play, that's actually a better title than mine.

I was genuinely touched by the strange old shop, and could have written at least twice as much as I did. I had to lose getting on for 70 words from the finished version too, to get down to the required 500. I described this process on twitter as like having to trample a load of kittens to make sure that the remaining ones had enough space to play.

Sadly, shops like this one are almost entirely gone. Replaced with convenience stores selling a wider variety at lower prices, the remaining ones will vanish too, unless they choose to embrace their retro nature and become a 'novelty' shop. Like the modern, plasticy, versions of old Bakelite telephones, with push buttons imitating the dial, they'll look like the real thing, but lack the genuine substance and charm of the original.

(Yup. Still on the home-made mash-up CD's. Current one is from October '05.)

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