A few days ago, I picked up on news of Totnes. Allegedly, democracy was dead in Totnes.

Why? A ‘right-on’ whole food business had vacated their premises; not gone bust, just moved to a new home. Oxfam was mooted as a worthy successor to their previous home. Oxfam is approved of in the same vein as whole-foods by the politically active denizens of Totnes. That’s when democracy apparently vacated Totnes. For Oxfam declined the offer, and the Landlord exercised his democratic right to rent the new premises to anyone who would pay the rent. ‘Right’, ‘Landlord’? These are mutually exclusive terms in Totnes. Rights only belong to the right-on.

The new tenant was Costa Coffee. Totnes cognoscenti was horrified. They petitioned the council, they formed action groups, they got themselves on the local radio, they invited the Guardian to write of their imminent peril. Totnes was a ‘naice‘ town, it already had 40 coffee shops selling wholemeal sesame seed cake and fair trade coffee, they didn’t want Costa Coffee. Their fear was that uneducated oafs might come to Totnes and actually prefer Costa Coffee, and drive the worthy sandal wearing Fair Trade vendors out of town. People must be protected from their stupidity – Costa should be banned in Totnes.

They lost. Costa won. Hence the liberal belief that ‘democracy was dead’.

I didn’t write of it at the time, but it has come back to haunt me this morning. I have just read ‘Sir Roy Strong’s Ludlow‘ in the Telegraph. I don’t know Totnes that well, but I do know Ludlow, and I well remember a similar campaign in Ludlow. This time it was Tesco’s not Costa.

The ‘Stop Tesco’s’ campaign went on for years. Years and years. Money was raised, angry meetings held, radio interviews conducted, newspaper badgered, some people devoted their entire lives to the ‘Stop Tesco’s’ campaign.

You might be wondering at this point just why companies like Tesco’s or Costa Coffee fight so hard to be allowed to trade in towns where they are so manifestly ‘unwanted’. Surely it is commercial suicide? I would argue that they are more liberal than the liberal cognoscenti.

Let us return to ‘Sir Roy Strong’s Ludlow’. It is, as he describes, a world of hand made organic sausages, bookbinders in shops with bow windows (when did you last see a High Street Bookbinder?), myriad antique shops, Georgian houses (average house price £572,863), paint shops that sell nothing but Farrow and Ball paint (choice? Who would buy anything else?), cheesemongers with an eye wateringly expensive range of foreign cheeses,  bakers skilled in the art of peasant bread, and more Michelin starred restaurants than anywhere else outside of London – all encased in a close knit jostle of medieval Grade ll listed properties based round a historic castle. Nowhere cheered louder than Sir Roy Strong’s Ludlow when Woolworth’s went out of business, it was the only ‘downmarket’ store in town.

It is not Ludlow though, merely ‘Sir Roy Strong’s Ludlow’. A well preserved playpen for the Metropolitan elite when they want to play country. I used to shop there, and wondered why the cheesemongers beautiful hand-made glass windows were smashed in periodically, why the local paper carried reports of violent town centre fights with knives – were the liberal elite who occupied these houses really so unruly?

Many years ago the railway came to Ludlow. It coursed its path a respectful distance from the mansions of the wealthy wool merchants, on the outskirts of town. Today, if you walk to the edge of town, past the twee Wisteria Cottages, the Dower Houses, the Court Houses, you will come to open fields. What wonderful lives these people must live, surrounded by such beauty. A the edge of the fields are thickets of tall trees. Walk towards those trees one day – for unless you fall upon the little-known underpass at Rock Lane, it is the only chance you will have to access Ludlow’s real secret from ‘Sir Roy Strong’s Ludlow’. Through the trees are paths, paths beaten down by hundreds of feet, nay thousands. Not gentile dog walkers; human beings, in search of food.

You see, the other side of those railway tracks, the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ indeed, was built a secret Ludlow. One that is never mentioned. Hidden more successfully from liberal eyesight than ever was the railway. Multiple thousands of Ludlow inhabitants live there; in houses, when they own them, of an average value of £84,368 . Many times more than live in the Disneyworld playpen. You will have found the Sandpits Estate. Or ‘The Pits’ as it is known for good reason.

Tesco’s knew they were there. Tesco’s knew that the inhabitants were overwhelmingly unemployed. Michelin starred restaurants prefer to hire Jemima on her gap year than a girl who has rarely eaten at a table, much less waited on one.  Antique shops have little use for a sales assistant who privately aspires to a DFS sofa. Tesco’s knew that ‘The Pits’ possessed two shops in those days, a news-agent and tobacconist and a Spar shop. They knew, too, that the inhabitants would buy own brand ‘Value Added’ sausages in preference to the overpriced organic paprika and Chianti offerings on sale in what had become a ‘gourmet food market’ rather than the food market hosted by old Ludlow.

Tesco’s won in the end, and they built what the cognoscenti refer to as ‘Tesco’s Revenge’. Possibly the ugliest building in Ludlow. A zinc sheeted monstrosity that owes its architecture to the cattle sheds it replaced. The architects tried hard with the verbal hyperbole. Allegedly it follows ‘the flowing lines of Corve Street blending seamlessly into the landscape’. Like Hell.

It is a brutally functional temple of chicken nuggets, DVDs, cheap paint, and top up cards for your mobile phone. A cheap cafe too, with sticky buns and strong tea. It is packed every day. Aisles full of overflowing trolleys.  An overwhelming commercial success. In spite of the noisy liberals who insisted that Tesco’s was neither wanted nor needed in their playground.

Do any of you know Totnes well enough to tell me whether the same hidden demographics apply there? Are there really only Fair Trade coffee drinkers living there?

m.barnesSeptember 24, 2012 at 16:21

Went for a weekend in the Cotswolds this year and 99.9% of the houses had
that milky green vomit colour on their doors. We cheered when we saw one door
painted in a bright glossy red – a proper 2 fingers to the taste police. Does
it ever occur to the chattering ones that their love of all things Kidston,
Farrow and Ball and artisan is a bit… well… sheep like?

MateiSeptember 23, 2012 at 22:05

The three mainstream coffee establishments make pathetic coffee. Starbucks
leads the way in ghastly coffee with its offering, which has to be liberally
masked with litres of milk and syrup in order to hide its burnt taste. Nero
does a flat, unremarkable Italian type roast… boring but better than
Starbucks. Costa is probably the the most acceptable by gourmet standards, but
personally I find it too strong, and too bitter, and not the coffee to drink
if you intend to get a good night’s sleep. They do make a good cappuccino,
however. I would say good for the residents of Totnes for opposing the
proliferation of clone businesses in their high street. The benefit of having
‘a few locals off the dole’ must be weight against preventing the slow march
to the day when every single good or service across the entire spectrum of
human wants and needs in the UK will be provided by Tesco.

m.barnesSeptember 24, 2012 at 19:19

Starbucks really is awful isn’t it? I’m sure it never used to be that
bad. I went in a few months ago for the first time in years, clutching my
laptop, and I couldn’t drink the stuff. Home brew is best but if I’m stuck
I’ll use Costa. Am afraid I see no difference between expensive artisan
cafe’s and the chains apart from the size of the coffee and bill – smaller
and larger respectively.

SackersonSeptember 23, 2012 at 18:28

… pop. (slightly over) 1 million, as opposed to (ooh, say) Monbazillac
(pop. 957). Combien de Tescos/Asdas/Costas/Farmfoods etc y-at-il chez
vous?

SackersonSeptember 23, 2012 at 18:19

Clearly you chaps mostly want to come and live in Birmingham.

Jeremy Poynton
September 23, 2012 at 14:02

Monbiot went to live in Machynlleth. Tescos wanted to build a big store in
Machynlleth. Monbiot organised opposition. Town newspaper organised a poll.
Poll overwhelmingly wanted a Tescos. Up yours, Monbidiot.

When thinking of such matters, think back to Toybee’s ‘silent majority’ who
were going to vote for AV in the referendum. In the end, Oxford, Cambridge,
the usual suspect constituencies in London said YES. Everyone else said – fuck
off with your silent majority.

BobSeptember 23, 2012 at 11:39

I used to stop of at Costa Coffee at the Watford Gap if the monotony of the
M1 was getting to me. A medium Americano usually did the trick, and restored
alertness levels (and then some). The last time I did this, maybe a couple of
years ago, the assistant asked if I wanted an “extra shot” in my coffee. She
explained that they would put a small shot of espresso into my coffee for 50p
extra. I declined the offer on the basis that the coffee was always strong
enough for my purposes. This decision proved to be the wrong one, when I drank
the coffee it was much weaker than normal and did nothing to increase my level
of alertness.

It appeared to me that this was a cynical move by Costa to bump up the
takings.
I now make my own coffee and drink it from a thermal cup. On hot
days I take it iced.
Aldi’s Italian blend is surprisingly good and costs
only £1.89/227g.

WolfersSeptember 23, 2012 at 07:25

Funnily enough there was a great hoo-hah about the arrival of a Sainsbury’s
Local in the heart of our little area of Canterbury a few months ago. It
would, we were told, be the end of civilisation as we knew it, and it was
surely written that the arrival of the store was one of the pre-cursors to the
end of days.

It wasn’t so, as you’ll see from my shameless plug and self-promotion here:
http://thesnowolf.com/2012/07/big-business-good-for-the-community.html

john malpasSeptember 23, 2012 at 02:05

It sounds as if you have a dose of ‘equality’ and don’t really like the
idea of having a group who gets above themselves.\
If a number of people
want to keep their way of life as they -like it -especially if they have
aspirations that you might call ‘to be toffs’ –
must they be crushed.

GildasTheMonk
September 22, 2012 at 21:56

Fabulous and informing debate

MudpluggerSeptember 22, 2012 at 21:55

If we’re honest about it, Tesco, Asda, Morrison’s, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose,
M&S et al do a bloody good job – and no, they’re not paying me to say it.
They bring a world of predictable quality produce into a single cavernous
place, where we can browse and shop efficiently within the boundaries of our
respective tastes and budgets. It is pretentious to deny the rural poor (or
the rural rich) convenient access to these palaces of consumption.
Yet,
although living within easy driving-distance of a number of those stores,
every week I saunter along to our local, one-man-band butcher and trade with
him. He sells different produce, differently presented and differently priced,
but adds an element of real human service response to the mix – he knows me, I
know him, we enjoy doing business with each other. Same goes for the local
bakery. But I also use the mega-stores, I exchange banter with the checkout
operators and shelf-stackers, and we also enjoy doing business with each
other. Both these models fit with my tastes and budget, so it all
works.
There’s a place for all types of trader, so long as they are
providing a service with which enough customers are happy. When a superstore
opens in a new location, many weaker small traders will fail, but the smarter
ones will concentrate of their own USPs, developing their offerings and
carving out a new profit-niche post-Tesco, which can often become a better
profit-niche than they had before.
We need to be careful not to conflate
this issue with the other factors leading to the ‘death of the High Street’ –
that is more about changing living-patterns. mobility, parking, flexibility,
choice, Internet-shopping etc – it’s not just whether a Tesco or a Waitrose
opened round the corner.
We have come a long way since my distant
childhood, when there was a different shop at every street-corner and lack of
transport, refrigeration and cash made it necessary to use them daily – we now
have choice led by mobility, we have less time available but more efficient
ways to shop, we live in more disparate places and not clustered tightly in
packed rows of terraced cottages. We have progressed and, in response, so has
the retail world which supplies us with so many different things in so many
different ways. I prefer now.

Ted TreenSeptember 22, 2012 at 23:17

Quite right, Mudplugger.

Changing customs and lifestyles are indeed responsible for many changes –
I check with supermarket comparison sites to see if any of our staples are
on special offer. Yes, I am very much what Marketing people call a
promiscuous shopper.

Yet for many smaller items, I will similarly patronise my local stores –
even at slightly higher cost. I just have a visceral preference for
supporting a family business in preference to the ubiquitous behemoths.

Robert Edwards
September 22, 2012 at 21:16

There is a delicious dissonance in the assertion (which I have heard, but
for obvious reasons cannot confirm) that the ‘Occupy’ protesters who squatted
at. St. Paul’s Cathedral were sustained (via their trust funds) by the
presence of a Costa Coffee nearby, which allowed them ready access to both
foamy lattes and arsewipe and, third, the ready opportunity to use both.

Many of them may have’ travelled’ up from the South Hams. If they did, then
I wouldn’t be at all surprised.We don’t do that sort of thing in Somerset. Or,
if we do, then we stay near Glastonbury and the civilized world (BBC excepted)
avoids us.

Woodsy42September
22, 2012 at 21:14

Being an Essex lad by birth I don’t know Ludlow, however I do remember many
many years ago all the upset about whether anything as coarse and uncouth as a
take away food shop, ie fish and chips, should be allowed in Frinton-on-sea.
And you think Ludlow has a problem? (Frinton seems to have survived one by
making it a restaurant that also sells take aways)

StevegeeSeptember 22, 2012 at 20:45

I live in a market town in Devon, not a million miles from Totnes. We were
under threat from having a large Tesco store built in the town, and a group
set up to challenge the planning application. Stalls were set up and
signatures to petitions were won. Sadly for the greens, there was a counter
movement by the “We want Tesco’s”. When it came for the local council to the
consider the voices for and against the planning application, the number of
votes supporting the Tesco’s application exceeded those against, an outcome
that for some reason does not seem to have received much interest.
We now
have our Tesco’s store. And lo and behold, despite the doomsayers, the better
of our independent high street shops – our butcher, bakers, paper and
stationery, veg, delis and hardware shops – continue to prosper (well, at
least stay in business with seemingly the same number of customers).
In our
town, we seem to have arrived at a fine balance: the affluent middle classes
can satisfy whatever angst they have about supermarkets or find the
specialised stuff they want, while those either wrestling with tight budgets
or struggling to park in a busy high street, encumbered with walking frames or
children, buggies and bags, can get the simplicity and relative cheapness of a
nearby supermarket.
Good outcome!

DemetriusSeptember 22, 2012 at 17:28

It has never been the same since the railway arrived in 1847. It was a
decent dirty working town and then all these fancy pants lot turn up with
their arty notions.

cascadianSeptember 23, 2012 at 04:53

Hmmm, is your surname Delderfield by any chance?

Mark in Mayenne
September 22, 2012 at 16:53

I also shared your suspicions, and will be interested to see how this pans
out.

alanSeptember 22, 2012 at 16:32

Totnes is self described by the “transition” movement as a transition town
(http://www.transitiontowntotnes.org/).

Hard to describe the transition movement. But they beleave the salivation
of man is rejecting “high” technology and going back to the land. Sort of like
a non-religious version of the Amish. They are a combination of the OMG the
world is going to end due to climate change, and OMG the world is going to end
due to peak oil.

They are also trying to create their own independent local currency the
Totnes Pound.

right_writesSeptember 22, 2012 at 18:28

Do you mean alan…

OMG where did you get that strawberry from?

I grew it…

You what?

Humble Observer
September 22, 2012 at 20:15

alan – “…the salivation of man…” Shurely that would be sated by a nice
cup of Costa Coffee

The Meissen
BisonSeptember 23, 2012 at 17:32

Yes indeed but what succour for the gentile dog-walkers of Ludlow?

cascadianSeptember 23, 2012 at 04:51

Now we know where the brain-damaged hippies of the sixties ended up. A
bunch of watermelons with no concept of private property, go see their
“economic plan” for the Atmos project http://atmostotnes.org/the-project/the-economic-model/
absolutely hilarious. Also read the disaster-to-be proposal for Baltic
wharf.

Of course they are registered as a charity, perhaps another candidate for
the Devils fake charities blog.

Oh, and they have an application in for a windfarm.

EngineerSeptember 22, 2012 at 14:21

You’re pretty much accurate about Ludlow, Anna; it’s a town I know a
little, and like. The problem of division between the well-to-do and the
not-so-well-to-do is by no means new; the Sandpits estate was built in the
1930s to give those enduring the truly awful slum conditions in parts of the
old town a better environment. Ironically, the slum properties have now been
gentrified (with a lot of private capital). Tesco didn’t kill the town. The
richer locals buy their loo rolls in Tesco, and their sausages from one of the
local butchers. The poorer buy their loo rolls and sausages at Tesco.

Ludlow exemplifies the rural economy. Most of the lower-paid jobs that used
to keep the rural economy afloat have gone. Agricultural labouring, forestry,
the myriad small enterprises like roadside garages have been mechanised or
squeezed out of existence. The unemployed of the Sandpit Estate have even less
chance than those in the towns – there may be work in Leominster or
Shrewsbury, but how do you get there if you don’t have the money for the train
fare, and the local bus runs once a fortnight? Rural poverty is far worse than
even the inner cities. At least in the cities it can be seen; in the country,
it’s invisible.

As for Costa Coffee in Totnes, good luck to it. At least it’ll get
half-a-dozen locals off the dole, even if the liberal intelligensia can’t see
that simple fact.

Anna
RaccoonSeptember 22, 2012 at
14:48

I couldn’t agree more Engineer. There used to be an excellent scheme,
don’t know if it’s still in existence to buy young school leavers mopeds –
without one, the young in a tied agricultural cottage with their parents,
have absolutely no chance of getting to work anywhere. without work they
can’t buy transport. It’s a vicious circule. At least in the cities you can
get a bus somewhere.

GildasTheMonk
September 22, 2012 at 15:29

Excellent and informed comment as ever Engineer – I have learned a lot
from this post.

right_writesSeptember 22, 2012 at 16:12

@Engineer…

“…small enterprises like roadside garages have been mechanised or
squeezed out of existence….”

By whom…? KwikFit? Halfords?

The point that I was making was not that Tesco (and its like) is bad,
but that as Gildas put it, their sheer “firepower” tends to “squeeze small
businesses out of existence”. Tax breaks, for small one-wo/man businesses
do help to redress the bal.

binaoSeptember 22, 2012 at 18:34

It may well be some would like to preserve their little chocolate box
worlds regardless of the consequences to others, but the power and the
tactics* of the majors are difficult to resist even when there is a
clear case to do so in less idyllic parts.
There are no Good Guys in
this.
http://www.saveourstorrington.org,uk/ tells the simple
tale of a partnership between saintly Waitrose and Horsham District
Council (also the planning authority) to treble the size of it’s store
at the heart of a traffic clogged village. There is already an AQMA in
place, pollution needs to be cut 40%; no sign of the required plan from
Horsham yet (is it secret?), nor any obvious way it can be done.
We
have been told there will be little extra traffic, because the larger
store will provide a greater range, so the same shoppers will just do
larger shops. So the extra 80 staff will presumably be put to work
pricking olives or scaling anchovies?
*classic is the closed question
survey of customers about what they want which is then claimed to be a
survey of residents. classic #2 is getting the councillors word
perfect.

Engineer
September 22, 2012 at 19:14

@right-writes

I’ll give you an example – knackermen. They used to be everywhere in
the countryside. Unseen, for the most part, but very necessary. We can’t
have the countryside littered with fallen stock corpses, it would upset
the townies. Besides, the hides could be salvaged for leather, the meat
for dogfood, and the bones and various bits left over rendered for glue,
gelatin and plant food. No more – EU regulations have killed all that
off. Fallen stock goes many a mile now to an ‘approved’ incinerator or
rendering plant. No more rural knackermen. One less trade, one less job
opportunity.

GildasTheMonkSeptember 22, 2012 at 21:55

Spot on

BackwoodsmanSeptember 23, 2012 at 09:09

Not only the above points for fallen stock, but the additional
stress on live stock going for slaughter. Whereas previously the local
abatoir was within easy distance of the cattle market, now live stock
get shipped from one end of the country to the other to the few huge
plants remaining – ie the ones that can afford, as per pointless EU
reg # xxx, to a have a vet, invariably Spanish, on site 24 / 7.
One
sad point, irrespective of the choice issue, is that our small towns
evolved over hundreds of years , without provision for central car
parks ! Thus there is a shortage of parking and this is exacerbated by
greedy councils and their parking charges and wardens. Thus, when the
supermarket tips up, they invariably build on the edge of town and
offer free parking, cue death knell for all the small local shops in
the centre of town.
If you elect me as council leader, my first act
will be to make the access roads to the supermarkets toll roads ! ( No
problem if Waitrose chose to reimburse customers).
@ good Brother
Gildas, you townie twat, are you not aware of the fact that nobody
shops at co-op, because a) the food quality is garbage and b) they are
antis !

right_writesSeptember 23, 2012 at 11:09

I could have sworn that I posted a little cameo of my experience
with my nephew and his visit to the Knackerman a few years back…
Obviously, even though I wrote it, I was too pi**ed to post it. Anyway
these guys haven’t disappeared, they are just lying very low, in light
of the corporate campaign being waged by the EU on small business.

Anyway, I agree with you… I was just pointing out previously with
my KwikFit/Halfords comment, that the small man always seems to lose
out in favour of the corporate, and whilst I am not against the
concept of the corporate business, they have less “investment” in
terms of loyalty to a locality than a local business, as well as more
firepower, and that a gentle levelling of an already skewed playing
field such as suggested (unusually for the French), is not a bad idea.
Better of course, would be the re-emergence of localism as a true
political force, rather than the emaciated one that has been created
by our Westminster outfit.

You only furthered my contention when you added your piece about
knackermen, slaughtermen and renderers… The government (EU) is a part
of the corporate triangle you know.

Robert the
BikerSeptember 25, 2012 at 13:50

Most roadside garages have been stuffed by the fact that modern cars
are virtually impossible to repair without the factory diagnostics
package.
Repair as such tends to follow the ‘replace plug in
components until diagnostic warning light goes off’

SackersonSeptember 22, 2012 at 17:39

“At least it’ll get half-a-dozen locals off the dole.” Sounds good, but
would that be net extra employment (and net extra income and net extra
wealth) once you’ve put others out of business? Where are the studies to
show the overall effects of Big Biz? genuinely, I don’t know, but with
issues like this you so often get the “create jobs” spin from the project
proposer and no in-depth analysis of social and economic effects.

binaoSeptember 23, 2012 at 19:32

Fair point given that retail jobs are now normally part time only, and
may be zero hours contracts. I would also argue that the obsession with
retail jobs at or just above legal min. simply drives the demand for more
social housing- in effect a subsidy to the retail majors.
What we
really need is a drive for high added value jobs with decent pay. The
problem isn’t property prices, it’s crap jobs.
One of the telling
comments from one of the agents of a major seeking to exploit my home
village was that he thought that ‘x’ % increase in business would be great
for the local economy. Problem is they don’t actually source anything at
all locally, but truth is the first casualty.
I really do hate being
told blatant untruths to my face with all the earnestness that these
people practice, even the most saintly by reputation.

Farenheit211September 22, 2012 at 12:10

Den, is there still a pork processing industry in Totnes? Many years ago
when I was there it was known as ‘Bacon Town’ by some.

right_writesSeptember 22, 2012 at 16:03

Was that Drings?

right_writesSeptember 22, 2012 at 11:51

Yeah, it is like ‘Sir Roy Strong’s Ludlow’… only more so Anna.

The scum live in nearby Torquay and its environs.

However, I disagree with your idea that huge corporates like Tesco or Costa
are being singled out by the ‘Sir Roy Strong’s of Ludlow and their ilk’, I
reckon that the corporates have the massive advantage of being able to trade
at a loss, and trade unfairly… that is until they have caused any other like
business, be it touchy feely or merely small, to run for the hills… Then they
put their prices up, so that the scum can’t afford their prices and go back to
Spar, and the ‘Sir Roy Strong’s of Ludlow’ have moved on to Leamington
Spa.

I believe that the French, have a system which rebalances the playing
field… Small traders get local tax breaks which the corporates don’t get… It
doesn’t stop the Carréfour or the Tesco, it just helps the others keep going
in the face of machine gun fire.

GildasTheMonk
September 22, 2012 at 12:03

Right_writes
I had a lovely trip to Torquay this summer, just for a
weekend. A strange place, potentially idyllic and prosperous, but at the
same time a bit run down and very much a faded glory and a bit edgy. It
doesnt help to be served by the M5, which is essentially a cross between
Total Wipeout and a car park. If the area is to prosper, then it needs a new
additional motorway so people can actually get there.
I see your point on
the brute strength and “firepower” of chains like Tesco. Yet, I find myself
well served by Tesco very often, just as I am by Amazon, for example.
I
shop a lot at the Coop now. A company which I find efficient and mindfulof
its roots within and as a servant of the community from which it sprang. I
understand that local cooperative movements in all areas (farmers,
tradesmen) is the fastest growing sector of the economy, so there is a
fightback by the “little people” against the corporate giants.

Singlane Acts of
TyrannySeptember 22, 2012 at 21:01

Of course many Costa outlets are franchise businesses who can’t afford to
run at a loss. Said small traders.

Peter Melia
September 25, 2012 at 21:22

The point is, the number of supermarches is inadequate. Cast an eye over
the car park of just about any French hyper/supermarket. It’s full. If you
want just a few items, the heart sinks because a long wait inline is always
in the offing. But wait a mo’, aren’t the super/hypers huge? To be sure they
are, it is common to find 60 check-out desks and still there are long
lines.
OK, so only about 2/3 of the desks are occupied at any one time,
but that’s to be expected, bearing in mind the French job security laws. No
one is going to employ a single extra soul than necessary, if they cannot
let them go, are they?
Besides the hypers, there are the smaller
Casino/MarchU outlets, mini supers, our local one has only three check-out
desks. In 10 years living here I have never ever seen that 3rd desk in use.
Or to more exact, of the 3, only two are ever in use at the same time. Same
lines.
But there are those wonderful small traders! Quite true, and
wonderful they are, but woe betide anyone who has the temerity to try to
curtail the fascinating conversation going on just in front of you, which
usually involves a client and one or two shop staff.
We have a “local
trader”, a boulangerie, which sells good bread and delicious cakes. It has a
long counter, maybe in peak periods half a dozen servers, and the line quite
often snakes three times up and down the shop, together with an external
section, waiting there time to get inside the shop. It can take over half an
hour to buy a baguette. Seventy years after the war ended and they are still
queueing for their daily bread!
Markets tend to be good, and there
appears to be an increase in roadside stalls, both of which offer a chance
to be able to buy a few things without losing vast periods of a
life.
None of this of course has anything at all to do with the Nimbys of
Totnes, but it occurred to me that “right_writes”, perhaps slightly
idealised, view of our Gallic existence might benefit from a small shot of
fact.

NoiseSeptember 27, 2012 at 13:21

So true, Tesco used to be cheap. Then it killed the competition and did
it’s best to hide the cheap things or stop them completely.

Am so amused to see them being beaten by Aldi and Lidl, who themselves
are now beginning to raise their prices slightly..

DenSeptember 22, 2012 at 11:36

There are plenty of ‘plebs’ like me living there. It is known locally as an
‘Arty-Farty’ place. Lots of students there, renting, but that will change when
the local college closes. In a nearly empty car park the resident jobsworth
threatened to fine six motor bikes unless we bought 50p tickets – Devon
generally lets bikes park for free if they do not obstruct car places. We paid
– we are mature – I wondered what might have happened if we had been young and
fiery. I think the cognoscenti equate bikes to trouble and are not welcome in
this pleasant little town.