Okay, sorry, I may have been getting a little morbid in the last post, so a few thoughts about where my thoughts are coming from these days...
In case you haven't heard, there's a proposal to open a major enormous Sainsbury's supermarket right on the edge of our lovely little town that doesn't really have any national chains. This will totally destroy the town -- I can't even count the number of traders who have told me that they will go out of business if it happens. So I've been spending a lot of time talking to various people around the town and trying to convince them that this will be a bad thing for our town. One of the questions people who support the proposal ask me most frequently is where I do my weekly shopping then. I pause for a minute, and then attempt to explain that I don't do a weekly shop in the sense that most people mean it. I don't go to the supermarket every Saturday morning and throw loads of packages in my trolley.
My meat either comes from one of the three independent butchers we have in town, or from my chest freezer, which has half a lamb and half a pig that I've bought from farmers I know. I get a weekly veg box delivery, of locally grown organic veg, and I supplement this with veg from an independent shop in town. Cheese I buy from one of the butchers or from one of the delicatessens, and the same for my butter. Eggs I get from an honesty box that I pass on my way to work. If I want bread, cakes, or cookies, I make these, with flour and sugar from the delicatessen. We do have a small Co-op supermarket and I go there occasionally to get a few things I can't get anywhere else: loo roll and cream are the two things that spring to mind. I get wine there sometimes as well, although usually from the independent off-license in town. And that's about my food shopping!
But when I try to explain this to people who want the Sainsbury's, they don't even seem to understand what I'm saying -- it's like I'm speaking a foreign language or something -- they continue to insist that I must do a weekly supermarket shop somewhere... So I'm sort of feeling like my life is somehow so drastically different from everybody else's (no weekly food shop, no television, no new clothing...) that I struggle to even find a starting commonality... Anybody else feel like this?
Hallow's Eve
2 weeks ago
6 comments:
As we've discussed, your life *is* drastically different than most people's in the western world (as it is from mine.)
Yeah, I know it is, I'm not trying to deny that, but how do I find commonality with other people so that we can relate to each other???
You'd probably be better off appealing to their Mom & Pop sensibilities, like asking if they want to put the local business out of business and their friends and peers out of work. Do they want the town to die?
I get responses to that varying from, "It won't have any impact on the town," to, "I don't care if all the little shops close."
Sounds typical. This is our world. People don't care about anything but their own convenience. (Sorry.)
I agree with both you and Rachel. The only argument I can think of is that their cash will stay in Wales if they use local amenities, but if spent in Sainsbury's it will line the pockets of the English! I recognise that's appealing to a rather base instinct, but all's fair in love and war, eh? For the majority, Sainsbury's will offer wide choice, competitive pricing, easy parking, and they will fail to see the downside. The local retailers should get off their arses and co-ordinate the fightback, frankly, not you!
Hope all is good with you otherwise.
Neil Marsh
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