Why I’ll shop until I drop

MANY have fallen. O’driscoll, tailors, founded 1880, whose premises were painted a washedout green that would be the envy of Farrow and also of Ball and where, when I was a child, it was still possible to have a hardwearing suit made in hand-spun tweed.

Fallon’s, established 1904, only traded in items of interest to its family members, so, at one time, it specialised in clocks and fishing tackle. O’driscoll, confectioners, where Kathleen Susan sold homemade boiled sweets in twists of paper and served tea and clappers (two biscuits stuck together with jam) at a wobbly table behind the counter.

Many have, however, survived and flourished. O’connolly, the electrical shop, the whitewashed walls and worn wooden floor of which speak of an age long before the modern technology it sells. Levis & Sweetnam, gentleman’s outfitters, admittedly only 70 years old, where I have seen more than one English peer buying shoes. Fields, grocers, bakers and victuallers since 1865, literally, a super market that offers so much choice and such extraordinary levels of service that it puts the Harrods Food Hall to shame.

Still, there’s no gainsaying the fact that shopping in Skibbereen has changed. The town is every bit as friendly and as well (if not better) served, but I miss the shops that have closed. Shops where one was greeted by name, goods were supplied on approval and accounts were offered as a matter of course. Shops that represented a slower, traditional way of life.

I love shopping. I dislike chain stores and giant malls and it is only with the greatest reluctance that I order online. I like what money can buy, but I wouldn’t say I was excessively materialistic, for, as Robert Herrick pointed out: ‘Who covets more, is evermore a slave.’

No, it’s what Daniel Miller, author of A Theory of Shopping, refers to as the ritual and sacrifice of shopping that I enjoy. The intellectual challenge of the hunt made more complex by a desire not to patronise any business that exploits its workers or causes unnecessary damage to the environment. The pleasure of consummation, even of something as modest as a secondhand book. The joy to be had from finding and buying anything—a favourite bar of chocolate or a fabulous piece of jewellery—for someone I love. Gertrude Stein wasn’t wholly wrong when she quipped: ‘Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping.’

What brought this all on? One of the few aspects of life I have really missed since we went into self-isolation has been going into town to do our shopping. I miss Fields. This is not because I am a glutton—oh, hang on, yes, it is.

Fields’s bread is straight from the oven, the vegetables straight from the ground and the fish straight from the sea. The cheese counter is a thing of great beauty. How I yearn to browse its aisles. Not that we are entirely bereft. Two of the managers have taken it upon themselves to keep us supplied. Indeed, even as I am writing this, I can see the shop’s van coming up the drive.

I will risk it, despite what William Blake wrote:

It’s the ritual and sacrifice, the intellectual challenge, that I enjoy

Since all the riches of this world May be gifts from the Devil and earthly kings, I should suspect that I worshipp’d the Devil If I thank’d my God for worldly things.

Thank you, Lord, for what we are about to receive.

Next week Lucy Baring