I heard some shocking news yesterday! Our village Post Office/store is closing in early April!
The owners are retiring, although I find it hard to believe they are retirement age - they assure me they are over that age but .... hmmm, they don't look it. They intend to incorporate the business portion of the bungalow into their own home, which is quite small at the moment and I would image will be pleased that people will no longer drive all over their front garden in their attempts to park as close as possible to the shop door! I wish them all the best.
However, this is going to cause a complete change of life style for numerous people in the village, me included. The daily visit to the shop for a newspaper will be gone, so I will have to find something else to get me out of the house for a walk every day - if I run out of anything, or have an impulse to bake a cake, there will no longer be a shop just round the corner to buy the butter, cream, jam, flour, cheese etc.
The wonderful spelt bread which they collected from the bakery every weekend, and kept two loaves for me in their freezer if I was away, will be gone. There will no longer be the possibility of a sneaky bottle of wine last thing before they close when I find we've run out and all our parcels will have to be taken a mile and a half down the road to the nearest Post Office.
There are a large number of very elderly people in the village (apart from me lol!) and quite a few disabled ones as well who have counted on the shop as a lifeline and quite probably people who only bought in this village because it had a shop.
During the snowy weather (still some more to come I understand) the shop was a lifeline and virtually sold out of everything. Queues were coming out the door some days!
It is a sad moment for the village and will certainly affect a lot of people's lives.
On the positive side, there are some nice walks nearby, we live five minutes from a main bus route (buses in either direction every half hour) and perhaps I will subscribe to an on-line newspaper (save the trees!).
What I, and I suspect everyone else, will miss is the camaraderie of the shop, chatting with the owners, meeting people - both those we know and new acquaintances and the feeling that the heart will be gone from the village.
Maybe it's time to move .....
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Our village shop closed some years ago and I still miss it. But most people only bought a few odds and ends when they ran out, the owners couldn't make ends meet. At least we still have a pub.
ReplyDeleteI would imagine that our village shop did quite well if the sale value they put on it had anything to do with it! A lot of the elderly population did their daily shopping there as they had stocks of everyday stuff and a good chill cabinet - all foodstuff bought from either Sainsburys or locally (e.g. eggs, bread, honey etc).
ReplyDeletehis happened to the village very close to where we are shortly moving to & the community got together, somehow got funding & opened a community shop. It's excellent & prices are only slightly higher than in the supermarkets. For everyday essentials & newspapers it's going to be a real bonus.
ReplyDeleteThis is it
In an ideal world this would be a solution, Richard, but with a small town about a mile down the road, on a good bus route, it probably wouldn't get any funding from anywhere. Hopefully people will get together and help out those who aren't so easily able to get about.
ReplyDeleteBTW your local store looks first class - hope they sell some decent wine ;-)
ReplyDeleteWell if they don't we have 3 more than decent pubs within crawling distance: Rock, Rugglestone, Carpenters.
ReplyDeleteWe'll survive.