All At Sea

We were picking our youngest son up from his guitar lesson a week or so ago. (You can skip to the end now if you wish)!

We were chatting with the shop owner whilst we waited and remarked that he seemed quite busy. He surprised us by saying that a couple of years ago he would have had five members of staff plus him and had to let them all go as trade decreased. He went on to say how the supermarkets and not just the internet are killing retail shops, especially those that are small independent ones. They're selling goods like Cd's and DVDs for less than retail because it draws you in. Once they've killed the competition of course they can charge you what they like and you can lump it.

I know I've banged on about this before so I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself but ask yourself how many shops (especially small locals) and doorstep services have disappeared in your lifetime? Do you still have a milkman? They're few and far between, I walked by my local dairy a couple of months back, it's empty, closed and that dairy employed around twenty workers. I can remember having a baker deliver to our house, we weren't affluent, it was just normal! We had a local butcher, greengrocer, hardware they're all gone.

I'm a drop in the ocean but I continue to buy my goods locally if at all possible. You might see signs in the supermarket telling you the goods are produced by local farmers but how much did they pay the farmer? The shop owner told us about a documentary on the subject, they pushed the price of a lettuce down to one penny-grown, picked, washed, wrapped and boxed ready for the shelf, they make 6000% profit at least and when you understand this you begin to realise how they can sell you other goods at a loss.

He's asked the local council to hold a farmers market once per month but they say there's no demand (despite the fact a neighbouring town has one) well I'd rather give my money to the farmer. Every little helps as they say, you just have to think about who it's helping?

The above all stemmed from this image, believe it or not! There were lots of closed down places along the seafront and it seemed a sad shadow of what it used to be which drew my mind back to that conversation.

I'd struggled with this image, processing it three times before I arrived at anything near something I liked. Still I wasn't happy and passed it to a good friend for advice. He pushed it further than I had the confidence too, I think I have a problem in as much as I try to preserve all the little details. So I took his advice and applied it in my own way, so thanks pal, something learned again.

Let me know your thoughts as always and sorry for ranting on ;O)

CM2009