These are a few of my favourite things

We have reached one of my favourite weeks in the year. It’s a time to look at the glittering displays in shops; Christmas lights twinkle at us and pretty windows cause us to pause. Baubles strung across Milsom Street, more like expensive jewllery than damp washing, sparkle in diamond-white and ruby-red. 

The sun is shining, market crowds have gone and schools haven’t broken up - it’s the best time to go Christmas shopping. And it’s good to support our high street. Do we really want pruchases to become nothing more than intensively-driven deliveries? More cardboard boxes, littering the patio, than the cat could ever hide in? Everything bought by looking at an image on a screen? Not only will we lose the chance to feel smooth velvet fabrics, lust after shiny silks or try on jackets, dresses or jeans in changing rooms, we’ll be waiting in more and more for deliveries. And we’ll be queuing more and more to return items which are the wrong size, the wrong colour or of poor quality.

If we continue to go in our local and city centre shops we can take our time and check out our purchases before we make a mistake. I can’t imagine Milsom Street becoming a ghost town. But when Christmas is over, cash registers have stopped ringing and Boxing Day sales have emptied stands, shelves and rails it’ll be January. A bleak new year - for some.

 Empty shop fronts aren’t meant to be. Like a stillborn child. Brought into the world but non-viable.

Let’s not go from one extreme: packed Saturday shops, queues to part with our hard-earned cash, no space in the changing rooms, to another: silent streets and litter in the gutters. 

Do we really want boarded-up windows? Sales notices on every shop front? More cafes or outlet stores? Much as I agree with giving donations to good causes we don’t want Bath to look like other failed town centres: every second shop taken over by a charity or temporary art exhibition. 

We are already losing pubs, and have been doing so for ten years. Former bars are now a physiotherapy practice, a snug now selling hearing aids. 2019 shouldn’t be a time to lose our favourite book shops, children’s toy shops, best boutiques or shoe shops. We don’t want to go to out-of-town furniture warehouses do we? Don’t we sometimes want to look at a set of saucepans or baking tins before we purchase them? Or a jazzy set of cappuccino cups? Or look at a newly published book in its dust jacket?  

These are a few of my favourite things ...

Does everything we want or need have to be brought to us in a van? Can’t we go out and enjoy window shopping, chatting to folks in the street, stopping to look and admire rather than just clicking ‘t&cs’ or tracking numbers?

Here’s to 2019: helping to preserve our vibrant shopping arcades, long after the Christmas shoppers have dropped and new year sales tills have stopped trilling.