Goodbye to all that
These unexpected forced closures at a time of desperately high debts have pushed potentially viable businesses over the edge.
Walking the high street, a closing-down sale caught my eye. It was a cookware shop, old-fashioned with staff in aprons. I stopped in on its last day, a Saturday, which is market day and usually a busy shopping day.
Ever since March 2020, high-street shops have been open and shut with farcical timing. First everything was shut, then various trades were granted leave to open, then they were closed over winter, then open and now (during the “pingdemic”) they could be closed on any given day due to staff members self-isolating. These unexpected forced closures at a time of desperately high debts have pushed potentially viable businesses over the edge.
Multiple commercial premises have closed. Letting agents have been closed. Bristol is a city with a high number of students and lockdown of universities and subsequent uncertainty has hit the student lettings. Closure of universities decimated local businesses that rely on student expenditure. Even worse was the complete exclusion of foreign students, which hit local businesses, local short-term rentals and bankrupted at least one language school.
Most affected have been restaurants, cafés and public houses, always closest to permanent closure even during normal times. Contraction of high-street retail has been a long time coming, but lockdowns crushed the hospitality sector. Governmental behavioural units’ anti-plebian outlook, their anti-alcohol public-health remit and a fear of people mixing, perhaps comparing stories and finding the government narrative to be not wholly reliable, all seem to have motivated regulations that harshly targeted public houses.
I went to this shop three or four times a year, mainly to buy presents. Going to purchase items in December – surrounded by the bustle of Christmas shoppers, staff wearing santa hats and festive songs looped on the PA – was one of my favourite habits. I loved the brightness of the shop as outside in the twilight, sleet spattered the street. On its last day, I passed half-empty shelves and denuded display cabinets. Two young couples and an elderly man were the only customers. (One couple unmasked, the other customers and staff masked.) I bought my Christmas present in August, paying cash. I asked staff at the till what their future was. They said the chain was contracting and that they would be working at a branch in Cribbs Causeway, a local shopping centre. I wished them luck and left, leaving behind part of my regular world, and heading out into the “new normal”.
