Town Mouse Tom Hodgkinson

Amazon and out-of-town megastores have wrought havoc on shops across the country. Instead of wandering down the High Street with a basket and a shopping list, we now sit at home in front of a screen and order online, or get in the car.

Bookshops have closed and country towns have become ghostlike, leaving behind rubbish-filled Londises, miserable charity shops and sad old pubs, barely kept alive by a few drinkers.

It’s not so much better in the city. My local high street in Shepherd’s Bush is dominated by fried chicken outlets. We have Sammy’s Chicken, KFC, Chicken Cottage, Chicken Village and Rooster’s Grill all within a stone’s throw of the front door; plus the more upmarket Nando’s. No bookshops, no pet shops, no record shops…

However, there is one species of retailer – one brave category – which seems to have survived the onslaught of Amazon and the megastores, apart from the fried chicken outlets, and that is the humble hardware shop.

Just at the end of our road of Victorian terraced houses is a miraculous cave of useful stuff, called Greenford Timber. It’s the kind of shop that makes you think nothing has changed since the Two Ronnies’ hallowed ‘four candles’ sketch from 1976, when the customer variously requests fork ’andles, saw tips, Os, peas, pumps and washers.

I love visiting Greenford Timber. The sheer variety and range of products on sale in this tiny space really is remarkable. We should all reject the allure of Homebase and Wickes, and relish in independent hardware shops.

There is a counter (remember those?), behind which stand two or three expert hardware suppliers with pencils behind their ears. As you enter, you squeeze past Polish builders and browse the shelves.

They sell absolutely everything you can think of, not just Phillips screwdrivers and WD-40, but plywood and dustpans, too. And they will listen to your issues and help you out. They will find the right screw for your spindle and even saw it to the right size for 20p. They will find you curtain hooks, scrubbing brushes, kindling wood, house coal, paint, glue, tacks to mend broken drawers, sugar soap and day-glo gloves called ‘Black Rock’. This Town Mouse was even delighted to find mousetraps on sale.

Even better than that, they do actually sell house candles in packs of four, and that in an age when it is practically impossible to find a shop that sells candles, with the exception of the largest supermarkets.

And the smell! What is it, that curious mix of wood, rubber and paint? Is it the smell of practicality and getting things done?

‘This shop is better than Amazon!’ I cried on my last visit.

At Greenford Timber, you are guaranteed a cheerful reception and expert advice from people who actually seem to enjoy working there and who are allowed to be themselves. No scripted dialogue. Not only that, but they will recommend local plumbers and electricians as well.

Compare this to the soul-draining experience of visiting a Homebase. I found myself in one of these temples of despair just before Christmas. It was a Sunday and Mrs Mouse had dispatched me to buy some coal, Greenford Timber being closed (as indeed they should be. 24-7 shopping is a disaster).

I trundled an absurdly giant trolley through the brightly lit aisles and searched for plastic storage boxes while I was there. I found one and checked out with an unsmiling woman with an expression that made her look like someone who had just found out her husband had been sleeping with her sister for the past ten years.

On I plodded, wearily and lonesome, trundling my trolley to the car and loading the bag of coal into the boot. How sad I felt, how drained, how much like a willing slave of consumerism, a victim of some Etonian hedgefunder’s dream to squeeze millions in profits out of ordinary people.

I suppose it will only be a matter of time before one of these Etonian entrepreneurs raises a few hundred grand from friends and relations, hires a graphic design agency and starts a hardware delivery business with the aim of disrupting existing hardware retail business models.

The start-up will have a daft name like 4candles.com, it will deliver hardware using electric vehicles and there will be an expensive and beautiful website offering a dummy’s guide to its services called ‘How it Works’. 1. You give us your credit card number and personal data. 2. You choose your hardware at half the price of Greenford Timber. 3. Small hardware shops go out of business, we buy a yacht and start up an educational charity in Africa as a fig leaf to cover up our enormous profits. That is how it works. But there is hope, not only from the traditional hardware shops, such as Greenford Timber, but in the new breed of hipster hardware shops, like Labour and Wait, a Shoreditch-based retailer which has taken the innately magical quality of hardware shops and made something achingly hip. They sell shiny colanders and expensive tea towels and find beauty in useful objects.

Let us all celebrate our hardware shops, the last outposts of real retailing, where you can joyfully buy four candles and fork handles.