I can’t remember the absolute very first time I realised that one of our high street shops had closed down but I recall the shock when I came back to my home town after college in the mid 80s and there was a bingo hall instead of the old cinema in Broad St (which would seem a retrograde step even if it wasn’t the place I’d first seen Star Wars and Grease….although I’d also seen Private Benjamin & Blue Lagoon there so perhaps the change was a progressive one after all). We’d also allowed the local brewery (which sold barrels direct to punters) to stop brewing beer and turn into a museum (which didn’t). Now that's definitely a backwards move.
I guess the first major shop closure I remember in our town was probably Freeman Hardy & Willis once people realised that buying sensible shoes from a retail outlet which sounded like a firm of accountants wasn't something you’d want to brag about to your friends.
We had 3 or 4 of every type of store in the old days and all on the same High St. We had so many greengrocers, butchers, laundrettes and jewellers that we’d never go hungry, dirty or deprived of crap bracelets (Gerald Ratner teaching us that, even in the old days before smartphones & social media, unguarded comments could still ‘go viral’ and come back to haunt you). However, in my home town at least, we had nowhere to buy clothes (except Fosters which clearly didn’t count). There weren’t even any charity shops back then where you could cobble together an outfit and try to pass it off as fashion. I lived off hand-me-downs instead but my sister & brother were so much older than me that, as a teenager, I ended up looking like Austin Powers....and not even remotely shagadelic, baby.
There were plenty of places to rent TVs though – either at Rumbelows or Radio Rentals (where you didn’t actually rent radios so sack the brand agency) – or buy pipe tobacco (which kept my Dad happy and helped my passive smoking habit) or book holidays abroad at Thomas Cook or Lunn Poly because the other option was ringing up the hotels yourself which tended to cost you as much as the holiday in those days.
There were 2 shops which were in almost every High St in the land, one of which has amazingly survived to this day. WH Smiths somehow continues to fend off far superior on-line competitors despite the fact that everything it sells can be bought more cheaply and with far more enjoyment off the internet. It’s probably like the Crystal Maze or modern Escape Rooms – there’s a real sense of achievement when you emerge relatively unscathed clutching an over-priced CD which you could listen to for free on Spotify or a £5 book which would cost 11p on Amazon and get delivered by the time you’d made it back home from town.
The second shop, obviously, was Woolies. Ours was housed in an historic old building (a perfect fit with cheap records and pick 'n' mix) on the site of an old butchers. Apparently a cow had fallen in front of this butcher's pony trap in the first half of the 1900s – I’ve no idea from how high – and he wasn’t the same since so sold to FW Woolworth & Sons in the 50s.
It’s easy (and incredibly tempting) to make fun of Woolies but it was the perfect place to search out the latest singles without getting drawn into some existential debate by the hippies who ran the local independent record shop. I know it’s incredible nowadays to have every song you’ve ever heard/liked/owned in the palm of your hand but there was really something special about poring over the cover of an album before setting down the needle and hearing those clicks and scratches before the song starts. Anyway, back to Woolies….is an idea which didn't occur to anywhere near enough people in 2008 to prevent the chain from closing.
The local newspaper had its office slapbang on the High St instead of the back room of someone’s flat with a printer, mobile phone and google. We had banks before they became trendy wine bars or coffee shops (what we wouldn’t have given for that innovation to come earlier – although there were no cashpoints or credit cards in those days so, without banks, we’d have struggled to pay for a latte even if we knew what one of them was) and we had Timothy Whites before they were given the Boots (bad pun - that’s who took them over).
There may not have been coffee shop chains but there were still plenty of places where schoolkids could gather around a hot drink and make it last for a good couple of hours before getting kicked out. Our local Wimpy was a particular favourite because it had Missile Command and Knickerbocker Glory. One was a video game and one was an ice cream extravaganza. I'll leave it to you to work out which was which but the answer may well surprise you*
*it won't
I don’t think Snappy Snaps ever came to our town so we either had to post our film off to Truprint or get it developed at Boots where, when you picked up the photos, you just KNEW the spotty-faced twat behind the counter had taken a good look through each of them and probably printed duplicates of the one of your mum in her bikini on Woolacombe beach.
The advent of mobile phones (yes, kids, they didn't exist when we were your age and yet we still survived) did for the film developers just as the ability to print posters at home to plaster over your bedroom wall made Athena (and probably Smash Hits) obsolete. And the owners of Tie Rack, already nervous of the change in office dress code policy, must've known they were completely buggered when even estate agents started to loosen their top button.
Besides these chains, the rest of the High St was either independents or pubs. Our toy shop was a magical treasure trove where you could while away hours pretending to be Tom Hanks off Big (even though he wasn’t much older than us at the time so was yet to take up the role) and I'd even travel to London (it took about a day or so back then) to visit a comic shop called ‘Dark They Were And Golden-Eyed’ which deserved to survive for the name alone.
It’s ironic that these types of interesting, quirky and innovative shops have all but disappeared, to be replaced by bland chains and ‘copy & paste’ outlets, at the very time when the High St needs to be interesting, quirky and innovative to take on the faceless on-line giants. Store owners and assistants who knew their products and could genuinely help you choose what suited you best have been phased out by call centres and algorithms just when customer service could be the best competitive advantage against internet shopping.
Bring back the quirky toy shops. Re-hire the knowledgeable staff who not only knew their merchandise inside out but knew you, your family and your domestic pets equally as well. Bring back Freeman Hardy & Willis. What was that? I’ve gone too far haven’t I?
Next: ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...SMASH HITS
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