I've never really bought into the idea of 'the dying High Street' until now. 'The changing High Street' perhaps, but not the dying High Street. Partly, this is because I've always been lucky enough to live somewhere relatively prosperous and vibrant. Now, though, even in the Affluent South, it appears to be really happening - but this time it's being accelerated by our own stupidity and snobbishness.
Take our very own High Street here. When I was growing up, a trip 'into town' (no, not London) was an exciting thing to do on a Saturday and where you always went for birthday presents after you'd exhausted the two newsagents in the village. You could find two card shops, a big newsagents, a record shop, an old-fashioned sort of haberdashers (material, notions, lace & ribbons, lingerie, gloves, stockings, swimwear, silly frilly things) and a big Woolworths. It filled the gap between village and major shopping centre half an hour away.
Now, what do we have? Woolworths closed, like the rest of the them, at the end of December. In the last three months I've thought 'I need to go to Woolworths' at least once a week every week (like I used to when it was open, before accusations of hypocrisy are levelled). Woolworths for us meant birthday presents for small friends, children's undergarments, photo frames, pegs, stationery, gardening bits (where is this year's new apple tree to come from now?), emergency school uniform and much more. Now it's gone, I have to leave town to find all of those things, and the other shops are suffering accordingly - if I'm not going to Woolworths, I don't stop at the bakers; I drive to another Post Office; I buy birthday cards at the supermarket or online.
In the meantime, the slow demise is being hastened by some frankly snobbish decisions by the local council. Our Budgens supermarket has been replaced by an M&S Simply Food - wildly expensive food that has been mucked about with. I wouldn't, by choice, cook with anything from there. And the ready meals are vile. Now, the suggestion is that the town really needs to close its branch of Iceland (so downmarket, darling - people from the (whisper it) council estate shop there you know) and reinvent it as a Sainsburys - a much better class of faffed-about-with food at a much higher price. Baby clothes can be bought locally, but only if you're prepared to pay £35 for a dress that will be muddy and grown out of in about three weeks. Which I'm not.
So where does this leave us, in shopping terms? Frequenting the market every week for fruit & veg that at least makes an attempt at seasonality; using Iceland while we still have it; walking a mile in the other direction to go to the butchers (fine on the way there, a long way on the way back with a month's worth of meat); ordering clothes we can't repurpose (now there's a buzz word) or make ourselves over the net. And the High Street slowly dies, because it's can't provide what a family need anymore - although there are two mobile phone shops, five coffee shops, two charity shops and a travel agent. I predict a pedestrian precint made of nothing but coffee shops within 5 years.
