Amersham High Street

Seems like High Streets are under threat. Dying. Like the dinosaurs. (Will we think of this as the Late Retail Era in years to come?) Too much online shopping and driving in cars is making the High Street redundant.

Amersham has some empty shops. I’ve enquired about them and the rents are forbidding to all except the huge chains or a wealthy chap (or chappette) who has money to play with – who wants to open a shop as a hobby or something.

And as for the rates… forget it if you’re a small, start-up business.

Just like paperless billing and online banking are to blame for job losses and revolutionary home management, the high street is merely undergoing a similar change. Can we really stop it?

Mary Portas wants shops to turn into crèches and meeting centres or something. But people don’t leave their homes any more.

Or will provision of crèches mean that parents can shop without children? (Children these days being such a hefty responsibility – much more so than in our parents’ day.) I still like the idea of looking at real things in shop windows. So I’m glad the charity shops thrive.

Do we want just charity shops? Well, frankly I don’t think I’d mind. They do sell everything. You could divide them up and have ‘Furniture and Home Goods’, ‘ Clothing’, ‘Electrical Appliances’ and so on.

What do we actually want from our towns?

And there’s no point saying, ‘A lot of small, independent shops’ because we’re kidding ourselves. We wouldn’t use them; they’d be more expensive than the supermarkets.

What about just markets every day. Like in the really ‘olde dayes’ (?) No vehicles, just permanent stalls for independent sellers.

And I don’t mean the French market where Amersham folk go to practice their terrible French and bore the poor sellers with sorry tales about their French investment property. ‘Oh, monsieur! Pas d‘oeufs cette Dimanche en la supermarche!’ or ‘Madame Chenille avait 20 hommes en sa maison hier!’ Or make the High Street residential. Why not?

One of the things that surprised me during the debate with MPs slouched on the green vinyl (leather?) banquettes was how large chains get round planning. Places like Costa Coffee.

They argue that they revitalise towns and attract other big business. Well isn’t that the problem? M&S, Waitrose, Café Nero. A uniform look to Amersham. Sterile and faceless.

La Roche is going to be residential units apparently. Not sure how planning goes for this. Flats, gym, flats. (‘Gym-flats, but not as we know it…’) Anyway, I do feel that trying to preserve the High Street in its present, fading form is like trying to make us use only ovens and hobs – no microwaves. Goodness, half of Britain’s population would starve to death.

It’s over. Let’s see what happens next.

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