Retailopolis

Peter and I recently went to a shopping centre to look for a present for Peter’s grandson, who was turning four.

As a rule, I would rather have my teeth extracted without anaesthetic than visit one of these fluorescent-lit concrete conglomerates, but, anyway, that’s where we ended up. This one has the benign-sounding name of “Town Centre”, but there was no sweet rotunda beneath which you could gossip with neighbours while the children tossed breadcrumbs to ducks on the pond.

Where once there had been sheep-studded paddocks, there is now a vast, concrete-paved retailopolis, complete with all the usual suspects – the mega hardware emporium; the discount chemist; the monster supermarkets; the discount liquor store – that have so efficiently and catastrophically destroyed so many of the family-owned, family-operated businesses in this town that gave it its unique colour and character:

And it was busy.

The parking is free (even if the car spaces are wedged so tightly together, it’s almost a given that someone is going to scratch your door when they try to exit their car) and the customers queued patiently, waiting for the opportunity to scan their own purchases and bag them themselves.

Meanwhile, back in the actual town centre – you know the one I mean, the one with the stately town hall, the grand post office (but it hasn’t operated as a post office for years), there are empty carpark spaces everywhere, “To Let” signs on empty shopfronts, and a few desultory visitors looking for the public lavatories.

Meanwhile, the intrepid souls who find their way down to our beautiful vintage precinct marvel at our almost intact historic buildings and the quirky collection of owner-operated vintage emporia.

It seems the commercial barons are not going to be content until the world is suffocated with ugly concrete shopping plazas selling imported tat which will end up in landfill in a very short time.

The world is becoming uglier and the small retailers are being squeezed out of existence by rising rates, insurance premiums, electricity bills and competition by “The Big Guys” and the “Hardly Normals”.

People respond viscerally when they enter my bookshop. “You don’t see shops like this any more”, they say. And I think, yes, well, there’s a reason for that.

This shop is a labour of love. I love what I do; I love every moment I spend here.

I play beautiful music, and am surrounded by beautiful books, flowers, objects. I am not squirreling away profits for my retirement.

This is my life now, and I love it.

But I implore you: if you value beauty, creativity, ingenuity, personal service, human contact – the stuff that enriches you, that ascribes human life with more value than simply as a consuming commodity on which to foist ugly stuff – support your small, independent retailers.

Today. Now.

Before the world becomes one huge, ugly retail conglomerate.

Michelle