Most of us, I think, remember bits and pieces from our childhood, but not the whole thing. One of the bits I remember is a ritual I shared with my mother three or four times a week. It was called "Going to the shops."
Now, "going to the shops" was not the same as shopping. Shopping was an entertainment, and I never learned to do it properly. But going to the shops was serious.
London at that time was more like a series of villages. Every district had its own main street, and most of the residents bought their food and other necessities there, walking from shop to shop because very few of us had a car. This ritual has stayed in my memory when so many other things have been forgotten, and I can remember those morning walks virtually shop by shop.
The first place we encountered after turning on to the main street was the best: Mr. Pask’s bicycle shop, a dark cave of a place smelling of oil and rubber and full of infinitely desirable machines. There was a repair shop in the back, forbidden to customers. I had read in a book that the Wright Brothers had discovered the secret of flight in a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, and I always wondered what Mr. Pask was doing in his hidden workshop. My friends and I favored the theory that he was working on a pedal-powered helicopter.
Next to the bicycle shop was a candy shop that sold loose candy from big glass jars and fizzy drinks in bright colors – disgusting but always worth a visit. And then some rather boring establishments, a butcher, a baker, a fish shop, and a grocer,each with its own rich odor, and where we always had to wait. Then there was a photographer whose place was almost as full of interesting sights and smells as the bicycle shop, a general electrical store, a wool shop much patronized by my mother, a shop that sold everything including army surplus items, fresh eggs, and radio sets, an old-fashioned hardware store, a shoe repair shop full of antique machinery and warm leather smells, and, finally, a newsagent’s shop that was an exploding cornucopia of brightly colored magazines and comics.
Small businesses like these are losing or have lost the battle against the big box supermarkets on the edge of town. Now everyone wants one stop shopping. What I used to do with my mother in those distant days was more like ten stop shopping, and it was certainly not efficient. But we used no fuel, created no pollution, and got a whole lot of exercise.
You can still find old-fashioned shopping streets in some small towns. Along the main street of our nearest town in France, in spite of all the boutiques selling overpriced clothes and tourist items, the shadow of the old, practical main street is still visible. There is the hardware store, the photographer, the electrical store, the wool shop, numerous food and wine shops, pharmacies, newsagents, a peculiar place that sells only knives, dog leashes, and walking sticks, a laundry, a small bookstore, and even bicycle and shoe repair shops tucked away on a side street – everything we could ever need, if we hadn’t learned to need so much.
Copyright: David Bouchier
