Michael DEACON
Ghost town Get ready for another intrepid adventure... to Gravesend’s high street
They say you should do one thing every day that scares you. So on Sunday morning I did just that.
I plucked up my courage, and went to Debenhams.
Admittedly, it may be argued that in the annals of human intrepidity, a trip to the Gravesend branch of a long-standing high-street retail outlet falls just a little short of the Moon landings or the race to the South Pole. But, Tesco aside, this was the first time I’d been shopping since the lockdown began. And what with all these daunting new rules that shops have to follow now, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.
As it turned out, the shop’s management had taken almost every possible precaution. A security guard in a face mask manning the entrance. Arrows marked out in emergency tape across the floor. Endless yellow signs warning customers to keep two metres apart. Another sign begging customers not to try shoes on if they weren’t wearing socks. Cashiers not only standing behind large protective screens, but wearing visors and surgical gloves.
It was strange. Eerie, even. Obviously all these measures had been taken to make shopping safer. At the same time, though, they made the experience feel slightly unnerving. As if I’d entered a Soviet nuclear reactor, rather than an English clothes shop.
Still, none of it was actively inconvenient – except, that is, the enforced closure of the fitting rooms. For safety reasons, it was understandable. But for the shops themselves, it must be a terrible worry. After all, the one advantage of going to a shop over buying online used to be that you could try on the clothes before you bought them. Now that’s gone. You might as well just sit on your sofa and order from your ipad.
The trouble is, though: if we don’t buy in shops any more, they’ll go. As will restaurants, and pubs, and just about everything else on our high streets. Jobs will be lost. Local economies will crumble. Town centres will die. Buying locally, in person, is the only way to prevent it.
The visors, gloves and yellow warning signs may look off-putting. But rows of boarded windows would look far worse.
vAt the weekend we were walking through the park, after a long and keenly contested game of It, when my son said, “Dada, that’s a birch tree.”
It was. Impressed, I asked him how he knew. Had they been learning about trees at school?
“No,” he said simply. “There are birch trees in Minecraft.”
You see. Some people think letting your children play video games all day is bad for them. But actually, it’s educational.
That’s what I’m telling myself.
Michael Deacon’s Notes From the New Normal returns tomorrow