The plastic fastener on the belt that came with the water repellent trousers I wear to work broke. I'm not surprised. It didn't look strong enough to cope with the vagaries of this world. I had to have a belt otherwise the trousers fall down, what with the weight of my telephone and radio and secateurs all shoved into various pockets, and I didn't want to use my nice one long term.
I looked on Amazon. You can buy practically everything on Amazon nowadays. When the S.A. needed a new chainsaw, the cheapest place to get one of the desired brand and quality, after much shopping around, turned out to be Amazon. It might have been different if I'd wanted an expensive belt, a lux, classic addition to my wardrobe that was going to add the finishing touch to my tidiest outfits, but I didn't. I wanted a cheap leather belt, with a metal buckle that looked as though it had a sporting chance of lasting a few years, to be worn underneath a baggy uniform shirt. It turned out that on Amazon I could narrow the search to 'jeans belts', and within ten minutes I'd found something that looked just the job. Even with P&P it could be delivered to my door for under a tenner, and it arrived in about three days, before the next time I had to go to work. It's true that when it came I found I had badly misunderstood the sizing on the website, so that the buckle came about a foot inside the nearest hole when wrapped around my waist, but the Systems Administrator has promised to drill out some new holes, and shorten the end. If I'd been buying Mulberry's finest I'd have been crushed, there again, if I'd been buying an expensive belt I'd have gone to more trouble to understand the size chart. It's fine.
This is partly why I think the High Street is in structural trouble, and our planners had better start getting used to the idea, and thinking laterally and creatively about allowing some changes of property use. I could have gone into Colchester, and paid to park (about the same as the P&P on the belt), and spent an hour trailing around Debenhams and Marks and Spencer, and peering nervously into jeans shops I don't normally frequent, or investigating Primark, but I didn't have to. I wanted a cheap, strong, functional leather belt and in ten minutes I'd found one.
At the wildlife fair on Wednesday I asked the Colchester Naturalists when the best time would be to remove some of the sedge that was taking over my pond, given it seemed rich in wildlife which I didn't want to disturb more than I had to. They said September would be good, so I thought that this autumn I really would get on with it. This meant that I needed a pair of thigh length waders, a purchase I've shied away from in the past. Again I looked on Amazon. Like I said, they sell everything nowadays. Top of the list of thigh length waders came a pair for thirty quid, that had got unanimous five star reviews from five different customers. Interestingly, none of them mentioned wanting the waders for actual fishing. One was clearing out a pond, another a ditch, and a third needed them to do riverbed kick sampling for a B.Sc. dissertation. Another said he was only going to wear them a very few times, so presumably pond clearance again. That sounded like my sort of level in the marketplace, as I don't need super-warm neoprene lined ones to wear all day while standing in a trout stream. They did come with steel insteps, to protect me if I stood on any sharp projections, which shouldn't be an issue in an artificial garden pond, but could come in useful. The waders arrived today, smelling strongly of rubber. They fit OK, and have straps with poppers to hold them to your belt, like chainsaw chaps, and altogether look as though they should do the job.
Now Colchester has a fishing tackle shop, next to the slightly upmarket department store at the top of the High Street, and they could probably have sold me some waders. But they might only have had expensive waders, for people who wanted to spend the day standing in a salmon river, and I'd have had to make a special trip there, and contend with sales staff in what is to me an alien environment. Much easier just to have a big, rubber smelling box arrive in a van.
It isn't going to get any better for the High Street. I look at my parents' generation. My father refuses to use the internet at all, and my mother is deeply suspicious about putting her credit card details on-line. I have taken to internet shopping quite happily from the comfort of my sofa, while the youngsters will be buying things on the move on their phones. Look at the house names in most English villages: Forge Cottage, The Old Bakery, The Old Police House, Church House, School Cottage, The Old Post Office. Look at the house fronts in the side streets of many small English towns, with their big front windows now covered by net curtains or blinds. Those were shops, forty or fifty years ago. And yet the villages and small towns are nice places to live (apart from the inconvenience of no longer having the shop-cum-post office that you spent about a fiver a week in tops when it was still open). The old business premises aren't derelict eyesores, they're just used for something different. Planners and councillors take note.
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