Countdown to Christmas and The High Street

From mid-November onwards, a curious phenomenon occurs in certain towns.  The outdoor market, which is sometimes branded as a German Market, but actually resembles a shed show with a very limited choice of styles available.

Before the criticism of town centres was that all the shops seemed to be closing, the criticism of town centres was that all the shops were opening and that each High Street, which in the fantasy Daily Mail readers like to construct for themselves consisted of independent shops staffed by cheery and attentive white folk, was becoming homogenised.  Where you used to be able to wander from greengrocer to butcher to farrier to witchfinder, you now drove to an out of town mothership of a superstore and got all your food and horseshoes there, meaning that the High Street became the home to Our Price, Woolworths and C&A.

This led to every High Street looking the same.

Luckily, at Christmas, with the arrival of the seasonal market, the High Street has the opportunity to once again attain some individuality.  Of course this does not actually happen because while there may be a way to make a High Street look unique, setting up 100 identical sheds selling sausage, cheese or very ugly wooden toys ain’t it.

Christmas Eve on the High Street can still be a special time.  From the bloke who stayed too long in the boozer banging on the door of a shutting and shuttering Perfume Shop to the pleased parent with a list consisting of ticked items, who is fourteen short hours away from discovering the difference between AA and AAA batteries.

Some think the High Street has had its day.  In turn, the out of town retail park is being buggered by broadband as people do their shopping from their sofa.  The centre of commerce has moved from the high street to the out of town superstore and now to the way out of town megawarehouse, the apogee of free market capitalism where thanks to zero hours contracts the warehouse workers don’t earn on toilet breaks, essentially paying to pee.  Thanks Thatcher.

Now I’m not so sure.  Maybe there is a place for the High Street.  The town centre, for instance.

Christmas Eve and we needed last minute gadget shopping.  It looked as though the only person capable of delivering it quickly enough was a fat bloke in a red suit.  Plan A was writing a letter and posting it up the chimney.  Plan B was Argos.

A quick internet search showed that Argos stocked the gadget in question.  In store.  In their store.  In the town centre.  On the High Street.  We ordered on line and promptly followed the stream of electrons to the High Street where the lights of the store shone brightly.

Argos on Christmas Eve is an interesting place.  It’s surprisingly quiet and relaxed, possibly because the sort of people who shop at Argos are the sort of people who have their shit together and who ordered that Wendy house weeks ago, collected it days ago and are currently in their garage assembling the fucker.  The most stressed person in the shop was me, having raced there on my push bike and keen to collect my clicked gadget.

Is there anything Argos doesn’t stock?  That catalogue is really, really thick.  I just used to look at Castle Greyskull and walkmans (walkmen?).  Who knows what the hell else is in there?  Mail order brides?  Cockatoos?  Small arms?

I paid, collected and was off in about ten minutes.

The only other collection I noted, waiting there on the shelves for some generous and thoughtful gift-giver, were two 8kg kettle bells.  Good luck getting those home.

There is a place for the High Street then.  It’s in the centre of town.  It’s not in a retail park, or in a vast warehouse, or online.  It’s a place where you can go and you can shop and you can get what you need and people are friendly and where you walk away from the shop with your stuff and a smile.

The High Street was there when I needed it.  Maybe in future I should be there when it needs me.