Town and country

Tomorrow we expect bad weather, snow, rain and gales so many in our road made the most of today’s sunshine.
Out walking I met 14 people and stopped to have long chats with six whom I had not seen for some time.

Later, I had to go into Stirling and while in the Thistle centre decided to check out the Starbucks which had taken over the space previously occupied by our art collective GOSSIP as a gallery. 
Sadly, we had to give it up because of the heating costs and it has remained  empty for months.
 
Now it’s a mobile Starbucks. It would be difficult to think of a more bleak, soulless  place than this new addition to our local shopping mall.
But of course it’s not designed as a social space, a meeting place in town.
If making money is the only criteria, then yes Starbucks is a success . You only had to look at the steady queue of people.
But the point is that there is more to life than making money, something Covid brought home to us all, and city centres are about more than shops.
Cultural experiences, and shared communal public spaces are  just as important, if not more important than the accessibility of a takeaway coffee.
Sadly, our local politicians have yet to realise this.