Death Of The Main Street

I guess this will be a familiar sight to most people in the UK that live or work in small towns. The small local shops are all dying off and the current economic winter should kill off a few more of the weak.

This particular shop was an ironmongers when I was a boy; it always smelt great, the ironmonger wore a brown coat and all the nuts and screws were in little box drawers behind him and you could buy four ounces of 1" self tapping screws. The likes of B&Q and Homebase at the big retail parks did for them in the late eighties.

The next incarnation was a video store. I was still hiring videos from there in the late nineties. I guess things like Sky movies and Love Film eventually killed them off.

The last was a store selling rubbish at 99p an item. You got better quality for double the price in Asda.

Now it's a good place to smoke in the doorway when it's raining.