Tuesday 19 February 2013

Doesn't get any more local than this...

When it comes to shopping local, what better example that the corner shop? I can't believe it's taken me seven supermarket-free weeks to write a blog post on corner shops, but perhaps this just goes to show how overlooked and taken for granted they are.

Although I understand they are a dwindling resource, I think a large number of people still have access to a corner shop, but how many of us actually stop to think about supporting that store - rather than just using it as a place to dash to in an emergency, perhaps on a Sunday afternoon when the Bisto has run out or one evening when we fancy a trashy magazine to read in the bath?



Our lovely local corner shop
In fact, the only time you tend to hear people speaking fondly of their corner shop is when it's under threat. Some neighbourhoods are prudent enough to mount campaigns when their local store is threatened with closure, but in other areas it is only AFTER the village store or corner shop has shut that residents grow wistful.

"We used to have a local shop," they say sadly. "But then it closed. Now if we want a pint of milk we have to drive to the supermarket."

Hmmmmm, I wouldn't mind betting that most of them drove to the supermarket in the first place - hence the shop's closure.

And until we started this challenge, I'm afraid Neil and I fell into this category. We'd happily get in the car and drive to Tesco on a Saturday morning to buy a few simply things for breakfast, rather than shopping local.

Here is a photo of our local shop - which as you can see really is a corner shop in the purest sense of the word. It's on a street corner about a three minute walk from our house, and up until we started this challenge I don't think we'd ever set foot inside it. Which, looking back, really is shameful.

Now we're becoming regulars and we've come to realise what a fantastic little shop it is. It's run by a family who live just a couple of streets away and is a veritable Aladdin's cave of handy and useful treasures. It stocks newspapers and magazines, alcohol, tinned goods, confectionery, cleaning products, a few vegetable staples such as spuds, sauces, ready meals, and even baby food. It has a little fridge with butter and cheese, and a freezer. It really does sell a little bit of everything and it would be very easy to come away with the ingredients you need to make a quick evening supper. And of course its opening hours are comparable to the supermarkets so it's very convenient too.

I popped in a couple of days ago for a tin of baked beans and got chatting to the owner's son, who was on duty behind the till. I'd been out for the morning and wanted beans on toast for lunch, and up until this challenge started I would have stopped at Tesco on my way home to buy the beans, simply because it wouldn't have occurred to me to go into my corner shop. But stopping at Tesco would have taken me three times as long, because I would have had to negotiate the car park and walk through the huge store to find the beans, before queuing for a till. And that's if I'd managed not to pick up half a dozen other items on my way round!

I told the owner's son about my pledge to avoid the supermarkets this year and he seemed delighted. He said that more people should be doing it and promised to visit the blog. He also seemed genuinely pleased when I praised the variety of stock in the shop.

So there's another friendly face to add to the increasing number of people I'm getting to know in my local community, all simply by avoiding the supermarkets. Local shops are also a brilliant place to say hello to other people living nearby, who eventually you will get to know, and there's usually a noticeboard with community events, lost cats and items for sale. Corner shops really do tend to have their ears to the grapevine, and they need our support.
I know it's not practical to get an entire week's groceries from the corner shop, but we could all try to at least pop in more regularly for odds and ends, rather than dashing to the supermarket.




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