Woolworths is now empty and shut, and the Officer's Club in the Mall has the ominously hand-written signs in its window of a geniuine closing down sale. The plate glass windows at the Nationwide (Personal loans, 7.9% APR) have massive cracks in them where someone has had a go, and so, it appears from the chip-board adorning the exterior of BHS, have two of theirs.
It is easy to read things into this, about the decline of the High Street. I then learn this evening on the TV that the average High Street in the UK normally has about 7% of its shop-space vacant at any one time, and ours has far less than that. I also suppose on thinking about it, that glaziers would be out of business if there weren't the occasional drunkard who takes his booze out on one of the shops swirling past.
There are smaller businesses no one takes much notice of which have been closed for some time - opposite the flourishing Lidl's, there is Animal Magic, for instance, which on a visit to the High Street this afternoon I noticed had been sold. IKON is still shuttered after well over a year, but as the place is in the hands of the estate agents which left the old Burger King empty for months and months before the YMCA moved in, this may not be a reflection of the state of the local enonomy so much as a sign the owners may have the wrong people working for them. Who am I to tell?
Jhelum Jewelers is now open next door to Hobby Home (a beneficiary of the demise of Woolies). The new shop is looking very good, after what seemed like one of the longest refits in local history, and there are the odd signs of life at the Arabian Nights. Next door to Ronald Brown on St James's Street, Da Soul has opened with a flash yellow and black signage to sell fashionable clothes to da customers.
Brooklyn, which had a closing down sale for most of last year is still in business, albeit claiming almost permanently to have reductions of up to 50% off and now sporting an unconvincing sign that the shop is for sale in the left hand window. A similar intimation of impending closure at the shop with no name on the site of the British Red Cross next to the Cafe Azrou does not show much sign of serious intent as yet.
menhir
You've got quite a thriving high street. There's quite a bit of commercial meat there. Some of the named stores you mention are nowhere to be seen here, they never have been, except for Woollies, and our branch closed down last week, as did the one twenty miles away in the County town. That town centre, such as it is, is going to look so awful.
Our town will be bereft, but the cheap goods shop that was opposite Woollies may now do better business, competing as it will, with just two smaller economy shops that sell mostly different stock to it.
We'll see.