Closing Time

My grandad was a shopkeeper - a grocer would you call it? Grocer doesn't have to involve lots of veg does it? Like pots - strawbs -mush - toms - that sort of thing? No, I thought not.

I have a photograph of a fantastic window display he made to attract his customers in, I suppose, the 1950s. Pyramids of tins and slogans and precarious beans. But where is that lost art now?

While the High Street employs window dressers, the best the corner shops near to me can manage is blotting the entire window out like a sex shop.

Or foisting and hoisting some tired worn ads for estate agents which end up repeated ad infinitum to the margin of the window to block any view in or out.

There's barely room for a lost doggy notice board or an advert for guitar lessons.

It's a view without a soul. Heaven forbid you can see inside the shop. That you might be attracted to step inside and purchase something.

You might as well write "Wads was 'ere" and leave it at that.

Maybe there are vandalism issues, but as a huge metal door descends at closing time regardless, I don't see how this would be relevant.

Maybe it's just a sad lack of pride or a shyness for daylight, or the fact that it just doesn't affect profits.

It might be all those things but how to put them in order.

A national referendum, perhaps?