It was painful when I lost my livelihood. admittedly it comprised only a modest shop selling assorted vegetable in a forgettable high street in a modest and unremarkable market town but it had been mine own and I was proud of what I had achieved over the past 35+ years.
It had given me the wherewithal to buy my house and pay off the mortgage on it. Slowly I admit but surely certainly.
I had originally been a market gardener in a small way and sold my wares to the previous owner. Eventually he had retired and I negotiated with him to rent his shop on a long lease with 5 yearly rent reviews. At the beginning my wife and I lived in the tiny flat over the shop but gradually the business grew sufficiently to enable us to buy the house. Children followed.
As it was a small town I soon got to know my neighbouring businesses on the high street and we would meet regularly at the Chamber of Commerce to seek ways to improve our surroundings. There was a small free car park for customers at one end plus a modest cinema at the other.
Footfall was adequate and we shopkeepers imagined, in the 50s, 60s and 70s that all would trundle along happily until we retired.
It was not to be.
A fresh Council decided, with little consultation or none, that our comfortable little town needed shaking up and modernisation was the watchword.
At the beginning of the 80s the Council sold some acres to a Superstore. The writing was on the wall.
The store was huge with parking for scores of cars, offering 3 hours for free. At much the same time the Council decided that the high street’s modest car park should become liable to parking charges levied by some anonymous company and policed rigorously. At the same time the Council decided in its wisdom that double yellow lines weee suitable for our little high street driving even more customers.
Unsurprisingly, the high street’s footfall fell.
Around this time our landlord died followed shortly by his widow. The children who inherited the shop decided the rent charged was far too low and months of wrangling left us with an unpleasant rise.
That was followed, inevitably, with the appearance of Amazon with all that entailed. No contest.
We debated the issues raised interminably at the meetings of the Chamber of Commerce but little progress was made against the background of the profit mad 80s.
I watched the high street fail, shop by shop with a heavy heart. It became ghostly. I knew my time would come and so it did.
Time demonstrated that nothing was going to come to the help of the high street and one sad day I had to admit defeat, surrender my lease and close my greengrocery.
The consequential bankruptcy was demeaning but eventually over and with the help of friends I returned to market gardening.
There, despite all that I had lost, I found something even greater.
My true vocation and my .self respect.
Foootsoldier Says… 