First floor

Well, it's just a car park, but this is a significant photo, as our car is somewhere amongst these and this is the first floor of the multi-storey. Never, in all the years we have lived here, have we managed to to park on the first floor. Neither did we have to queue to pay, that rarely happens.

I know it was Monday morning, but even so it is an unusual occurrence. Carlisle was so quiet and my hairdresser says it is the same every day. I just wonder whether this is a sign of how different things might be now. Have people stopped going to city centres as often, or maybe not at all? We were only there today so I could go to the hairdresser and the book shops and Gordon could do a few things, which had little to do with shopping. The last time we were there was several months ago. It doesn't help that there are so many empty shops, e.g. the huge Debenhams that was the main store in the shopping centre. 

I just thought about us - we do so much online shopping now; we have got out of the habit of going into cafes; we use local services. Lots of ways that our habits have changed and I can only imagine that many others are the same. Maybe it is up to the youngsters to keep the city centres alive, or are they actually doomed.