All Things Must Pass.


As I walked into town today, I passed the former premises of my favourite bookshop, Eric T Moore, to see a builder chipping off its awning with a chisel. This made me reflect with sadness at the amount of independent businesses that have closed nearby in recent months.

Three shops have gone on the same street alone, with a number of others about the town following suit. The card shop I’d frequented for years (not wanting to fall for that Simply Clintons bullshit) shut its doors for the final time not so long ago, leaving me at a loss as to where to buy something other than the Forever Friends and comic-sans-fonted-yet-not-comic-in-content fare that's on sale everywhere else; people who once said how nice the cards I gave them were will probably now receive the selfsame design they gave me on the previous equivalent holiday; we may as well communicate by round-robin.

This is a pattern that's reflected up and down the country, as more and more small businesses struggle to compete with their multinational counterparts. It’s hard for an indie enterprise to get the same exposure as these familiarly-branded beasts, in the same way that I can’t compete with the success of Jack Whitehall (Lord love him).

Hopefully, this trend will settle down with time. Thankfully, the town where I live - Hitchin - still has plenty of individuality to speak of, though they’ll never be able to replace my once-favourite bookshop. It had been there for fifty years, I doubt I’ll even learn to read in that time-span.

Popular posts from this blog

Shakerpuppetmaker.

Image
Have Parker from Thunderbirds and Noel Gallagher ever been seen in the same room? The resemblance is uncanny. So much so, I think something’s afoot. If my suspicions are correct, I've stumbled across a secret that will blow the music and puppet industry wide apart. In the mid-60s / mid-90s at least. It doesn’t take long to see the signposts. There’s the similarity between the name of Oasis’ first single, Supersonic, and Supermarianation, Gerry Anderson’s puppetry technique. The Gallagher brothers would often wear Parkas . Live Forever was clearly a reference to Captain Scarlet and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to the size difference between Noel and his bandmates. The more you think about it, the more brazen it gets. It’s fishier than Area 51, Paul is Dead and JFK's assassination put together. The only glitch to the theory is scale . According to Wikipedia, Anderson’s marionettes were 1’10” and Gallagher is 5’8”. How does he maintain an illusion of avera...
Read more

Stevenage: A (Tiny) River Runs Through it.

If ever a river was mis-sold, it’s the Roaring Meg in Stevenage. I just walked past it on my way to the retail park that has taken its name. They’re similarly uninspiring. The river is less of a roar and more of a dribble; cystitis sufferers produce greater flow. The retail park is soulless. What was once a thriving enterprise is nearly devoid of atmosphere, save an underlying essence of emptiness and despair. With a Toys R Us. When it was first built I was excited. Back then, the thought of a bowling alley, an ice rink, a Harvester and a Blockbuster Video within a small surface area was enticing. I celebrated many birthdays on site. There was an indoor cricket pitch there for a while where I once had a joint party with a friend. Why someone with an almost pathological fear of sport would agree to such a venture is beyond me, but I did it. Now, there’s very little at the Roaring Meg of note. The river would be a metaphor for the shopping ce...
Read more

Comedy That's Worth a Letch.

Today, I nipped to Letchworth to meet with illustrator (and one-time - two-time - comedy poet) Mushybees, to discuss an event Mostly Comedy will act as surrogate parents to as part of Letchworth’s Arts Takeover in a couple of weeks. Months ago he got into contact to see if we’d be up for co-organising a comedy stage as part of Letchworth’s weekend of arts-based attractions in July; something I’d provisionally said yes to, before things got hectic in the lead-up to Edinburgh and we didn’t take it any further. Despite not getting down to the nitty-gritty straight away, we managed to pull a line-up together in a back-and-forth of emails yesterday, leading to me getting Glyn’s blessing and us deciding we’d officially go ahead with it (whatever ‘officially’ means in this context). In reality, it’s not complicated: from 12pm until 6pm-ish on the 22 nd July, Glyn, Mushybees and I will host four Edinburgh previews from four acts (including me), before Nor...
Read more