After an agonising battle with my personal statement and the UCAS website, the thought that kept me sane earlier was of munching on some sugary goodies whilst watching an episode of 'The Inbetweeners' recorded from last night. So, I took a trip into my local corner shop on the way home from school. To be precise, I should say my 'next-door-but-two-to-the-corner-but-the-actual-corner-is-a-building-site' shop. But who needs that amount of detail? I would dearly love to say that the shop in question is one of those quintessentially English village shops and post offices, with artistic displays of organic vegetables and local jams...but it isn't. No, unfortunately it is but a mini-market on a busy road, but I can dream.
Whilst in the queue, I indulged my favourite pass-time of them all, people-watching. The person responsible for the wait in the first place was an unfortunate teenage boy, fresh off The Train, who wanted to buy some goods totalling about £1.75, but was 50p short and the shop do not accept credit cards for purchases under £5. I, being a regular customer, knew this and felt very smug as I stood holding my chocolate in one hand and my exact change in the other :)
The elderly lady behind him, who had very neatly pencilled-on eyebrows, bought four bottles of wine (at 4.30 in the afternoon?) and enquired about the whereabouts of 'The Daily Mail'. Now, it is not for me to judge people based on their newspaper of choice...but I would have taken her for more of a 'Guardian' reader myself!
Then, I turned round and saw possibly the most disturbing sight of the day: A middle aged man, on tip-toes, rummaging through the ADULT MAGAZINES. Being young and naive, I never thought that anyone actually bought these top-shelf horrors, but today I was proven wrong. I was treated to a quick snatch of a girl with the words 'RED HOT!!!!' plastered over her boobs before I quickly turned away.
On other visits to the shop, I have noticed what a strange variety of products they sell. There is literally room for half a person per aisle, yet the shelves continue to be piled high with various random goods. Synthetic woolly hats stand shoulder to shoulder with Beef Jerky (who even buys that?!) and cut-price chocolate coins from Christmas. They have row upon row of dog food, various suspicious own-brand ready meals and of course, the valuable confectionary section. I never see anyone buying anything other than sweets or newspapers in there (except the time I had to buy an onion for my mum ), so I wonder why they stock it all?
A survey by SPAR revealed that "in 2002 the local shop was voted the number one essential part of the community by 96% of the UK population, putting it way ahead of the pub, school and Post Office. In addition, 98% of the population felt they would be inconvenienced if their local shop disappeared, and 57% said they would be willing to fight back against any threat to its survival."
I agree with this. They may not be the most attractive places in the world, and mine are certainly lacking artistic interiors and organic/fairtrade/vegetarian/vegan/frutarian options, but who cares? Let's all go and splash out on meat pies, cat litter and Haribo and support our local shops!
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