We used to have almost all family owned shops - selling one particular line, like bags, wool, cards, butchers, bakers etc. Now many of those shops have disappeared and I miss them so much.
We now have Boots, M&S clothing as well food shops, HMV, B&Q, Iceland etc. etc. many coffee bars, fast food, sandwich bars and charity shops. Luckily there are still a few Guernsey run shops which I try to support as much as possible, often run by descendants of the same family that started them up in the first place. However much of the shopping is now done online and these local shops are feeling the pinch. It makes my blood boil!!
Where I live in Llandudno, there is nowhere except the supermarkets to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, and the only shop selling artisan bread has closed. I have recently started going to a small town a few miles away which has mostly independent retailers. I can do it for nothing with my OAP bus pass, and it's good to be able to buy ripe fruit that I can eat the same day. Supermarket fruit is as hard as bullets and the best before date is history long before it's ripe.
I love charity shops, and get brilliant bargains. Today I paid£10 for a brand new pair of "Hotter" shoes, they retail for about£60.
We have a really nice fruit and veg shop in Goring that is always quite busy. Meat I tend to buy at an independent butchers in Worthing. Lovely meat and reasonable prices if you buy in bulk and he will let you mix trays so I often buy a tray of chicken breasts, tray of steak and a tray of chops for £20.
cat food and cleaning stuff, toilet roll, kitchen roll and toiletries I buy in bulk when on offer in wilkos. I stop at Morrison’s most morning s to buy fresh rolls and milk and go to Tesco on a Saturday to get the rest.
i think we still have a decent collection of shops in Goring and Worthing and we also have our fair share of pound shops, charity shops and takeaways.
To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.
Mike, be very careful what you wish for and remember those times. Typhoid rife in over crowded city's because of bad water due to poor drainage, in our area clean drinking water has only been available for less than one hundred and fifty years. Then it was a single cold water tap in each house if you were lucky more like a stand pipe shared by several houses. All the diseases children got some where killers and no instant cures, even in my day the local Fever Hospital was usually full of children and not all came out. We cannot cherry pick the best bits and it takes very little to lose everything we have gained look at the wars in the Middle East and with the world in the state it is in plus an American President who wants to isolate half the world it could happen, I saw the Middle east, the devastation caused by war and tribalism and worse religion. We still have to learn this world is one, all people have the same expectations and comes a time we must live as one nation.
Our Local Paper is full of letters wishing for the old days, the Town is going to the dogs, my Grandchildren think it a great town, they do not yearn for something they never saw, it is called progress, ever on ever up, my time is over it is now their world. We made a mess of it let them make their own mess whilst we sit and dream of the good old days that were only good for some of us.
Hear! Hear! Frank ........... schoolfriends crippled by polio, others killed by diptheria .... 'old people' dying of cold and poverty in their 60s or even sooner, single mums betrayed by men and losing their children and being locked in asylums because of their 'immorality' ............. The Good Old Days indeed
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Absolutely agree Dove, my mum and dad both born in the 1920’s used to say.....don’t talk to me about the good old days. So did my aunt also from Woolwich, nothing good then.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
Frank, we used to live and work in Stockton 38 years ago for about 4 years. I used to visit the market in my lunch hour (especially the plant stall !).
Different times now, where we live "down South", we have 5 supermarkets of various sizes within a 10 minute drive. My clothes shopping is mainly done online.
To go into town involves queing in traffic and paying to park, then trying to find the shops amongst all the coffee shops, etc. To be honest, l haven't been town shopping for years. If I need to go shopping I take the car to Cribbs where I can park for free for as long as I need to.
I don't know who said it but it's sadly true: "All progress changes one set of problems for another."
On a more optimistic note, someone recently posted on Facebook something to the effect that when considering the possibility of time travel, people fear that a small change in the past could have catastrophic results in the present. Yet people find it hard to believe that small changes in their present behaviour could make big changes in the future.
Globalisation they call it. I was in Trondheim, Norway, yesterday, got lost coming back from the Cathedral to the boat. We walked down a shopping mall. Me, a girl from Nottingham, trained at the biggest Chemist in the land, was gobsmacked to see a Boots in the middle of the high street, complete with three for two offers.
Posts
We used to have almost all family owned shops - selling one particular line, like bags, wool, cards, butchers, bakers etc. Now many of those shops have disappeared and I miss them so much.
We now have Boots, M&S clothing as well food shops, HMV, B&Q, Iceland etc. etc. many coffee bars, fast food, sandwich bars and charity shops. Luckily there are still a few Guernsey run shops which I try to support as much as possible, often run by descendants of the same family that started them up in the first place. However much of the shopping is now done online and these local shops are feeling the pinch. It makes my blood boil!!
Where I live in Llandudno, there is nowhere except the supermarkets to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, and the only shop selling artisan bread has closed. I have recently started going to a small town a few miles away which has mostly independent retailers. I can do it for nothing with my OAP bus pass, and it's good to be able to buy ripe fruit that I can eat the same day. Supermarket fruit is as hard as bullets and the best before date is history long before it's ripe.
I love charity shops, and get brilliant bargains. Today I paid£10 for a brand new pair of "Hotter" shoes, they retail for about£60.
We have a really nice fruit and veg shop in Goring that is always quite busy. Meat I tend to buy at an independent butchers in Worthing. Lovely meat and reasonable prices if you buy in bulk and he will let you mix trays so I often buy a tray of chicken breasts, tray of steak and a tray of chops for £20.
cat food and cleaning stuff, toilet roll, kitchen roll and toiletries I buy in bulk when on offer in wilkos. I stop at Morrison’s most morning s to buy fresh rolls and milk and go to Tesco on a Saturday to get the rest.
i think we still have a decent collection of shops in Goring and Worthing and we also have our fair share of pound shops, charity shops and takeaways.
Mike, be very careful what you wish for and remember those times. Typhoid rife in over crowded city's because of bad water due to poor drainage, in our area clean drinking water has only been available for less than one hundred and fifty years. Then it was a single cold water tap in each house if you were lucky more like a stand pipe shared by several houses. All the diseases children got some where killers and no instant cures, even in my day the local Fever Hospital was usually full of children and not all came out. We cannot cherry pick the best bits and it takes very little to lose everything we have gained look at the wars in the Middle East and with the world in the state it is in plus an American President who wants to isolate half the world it could happen, I saw the Middle east, the devastation caused by war and tribalism and worse religion. We still have to learn this world is one, all people have the same expectations and comes a time we must live as one nation.
Our Local Paper is full of letters wishing for the old days, the Town is going to the dogs, my Grandchildren think it a great town, they do not yearn for something they never saw, it is called progress, ever on ever up, my time is over it is now their world. We made a mess of it let them make their own mess whilst we sit and dream of the good old days that were only good for some of us.
Frank.
Hear! Hear! Frank ........... schoolfriends crippled by polio, others killed by diptheria .... 'old people' dying of cold and poverty in their 60s or even sooner, single mums betrayed by men and losing their children and being locked in asylums because of their 'immorality' ............. The Good Old Days indeed
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Absolutely agree Dove, my mum and dad both born in the 1920’s used to say.....don’t talk to me about the good old days. So did my aunt also from Woolwich, nothing good then.
Frank, we used to live and work in Stockton 38 years ago for about 4 years. I used to visit the market in my lunch hour (especially the plant stall !).
Different times now, where we live "down South", we have 5 supermarkets of various sizes within a 10 minute drive. My clothes shopping is mainly done online.
To go into town involves queing in traffic and paying to park, then trying to find the shops amongst all the coffee shops, etc. To be honest, l haven't been town shopping for years. If I need to go shopping I take the car to Cribbs where I can park for free for as long as I need to.
As in everything, there are good and bad changes.
I don't know who said it but it's sadly true: "All progress changes one set of problems for another."
On a more optimistic note, someone recently posted on Facebook something to the effect that when considering the possibility of time travel, people fear that a small change in the past could have catastrophic results in the present. Yet people find it hard to believe that small changes in their present behaviour could make big changes in the future.
As my son in law always says, every generation has their problems and so will the next.
Globalisation they call it. I was in Trondheim, Norway, yesterday, got lost coming back from the Cathedral to the boat. We walked down a shopping mall. Me, a girl from Nottingham, trained at the biggest Chemist in the land, was gobsmacked to see a Boots in the middle of the high street, complete with three for two offers.