Forgotten

I’d forgotten all about this blog, that’s not good is it?  Walking through town today, I noticed a lot of empty shops and I suppose in the weeks and months ahead there will be a lot more vacated premises which is really sad.

Woolworth’s in Broad Street went the way of the dodo in early January.  I did wander in but all there was left were a few items on the front right of the store as you walked in.  They were even advertising fixtures and fittings from the shop on a board near the front of the store which could be yours for just a few pounds.  I felt like I was picking over the bones of a not quite dead body and so left as quickly as I’d entered.

Growing up, Woolies was a great shop.  That was when it went right the way through from Broad Street to Friar Street and there was even a side entrance out to West Street.  They sold everything there though I remember it mainly for the record shop halfway in and of course, the pic-and-mix sweets!  It was just brilliant, I can’t over-emphasise how good it was and it was always heaving with people.

They had a restaurant/coffee shop.  They sold clothes, toys, wool, all sorts of things.  The Woolies that the younger generation have seen over the past 10-15 years was merely a shadow of its former glorious self.  As a kid, I loved nothing better than heading into town on a Saturday to Woolworth’s and then Knights, the toy shop where the Abbey National is, further down Broad Street.

Maybe it’s my age but something has been lost in terms of shops, not just in Reading but nationally too.  All the atmosphere seems to have gone from them.  I guess kids today will look back nostalgically on stores such as Primark, River Island and GAP.  Who knows?

It’s not just a case though of shops closing down.  A lot of people met loved ones in the shops which are now disappearing, there’s a history to them and of course even if all the staff members ended up working together elsewhere, it wouldn’t be the same.  It takes time for a place to build up its own feel and of course, that’s all lost when a firm or business goes under.

I’m assuming that Tesco or some other such large concern will go in the space recently vacated by Woolies.  It would have to be a big concern which will be least hit by the recession and supermarkets do well whatever the financial climate.  I know Iceland have bought 51 Woolworth stores throughout the UK, just not the one in Reading.

Zavvi is also on the way out but to be honest, it never really grabbed my attention the way Virgin Megastores did when they were thriving.  The name was wrong and that awful lime green coloured font didn’t help either.

A shop I often frequent is also going and that’s Shakti which is at the very top of the Bristol & West Arcade near the back entrance to Marks & Spencer.  It’s been in the town in various places for 20 years now but the big business guys who own the arcade want newer, flashier looking shops there so what can you do?  Profits before people, isn’t that always the way now?

Music to walk by….

When I was growing up in Reading, I remember an unusually attired gentleman who used to play the violin in Minster Street.  He had something of the gypsy about him, always wore a heavily brocaded waistcoat.  He was a character and was there for years doing his thing!

Then there was a chap who used to play the guitar in Smelly Alley.  As far as I could remember he could only perform the one song which was “The Boxer” by Simon and Garfunkel.  The words “lye la lye” would issue from the Broad Street entrance to the alley and it wouldn’t be long before this refrain was stuck in your head for the ENTIRE day.  He had a coarse-haired beard, reeked of tobacco and drove a beaten up VW Campervan.

There was a blind man who stood in Broad Street.  He whistled popular songs.  He was very good.  I thought he lived in Reading, I was getting ready to claim his as one of our own then discovered on a day trip to Chichester, that this was just one of his patches.  Darn!

There doesn’t seem to be anyone who features regularly in the Town Centre anymore.  Occasionally they’ll be a steel band or the Peruvian panpipes guy who also flogs CD’s but that’s it.  Reading needs something, someone who can reach the heady heights of times past.  If anyone feels like a bit of public humiliation and has a certain flair musically then please get in touch with the local Council who I’m sure will see about finding you a pitch somewhere in the Town Centre.

Reading…

I ventured into the Town Centre yesterday, I had some cash and wanted to blow it on some load of rubbish I didn’t really need and what better place to do that than The Oracle, that is if you can find a shop within it that entices you in and as I didn’t need some expensive sweet-smelling soap that would probably have had my genitals itching until next Wednesday or some tea which can be bought elsewhere for about a third of the price and is every bit as good, I came back with pretty much what I left home with.

What is it with The Oracle?  It’s a lovely mall, I can’t suggest otherwise.  However it lacks a certain indefinable something which I’m going to call, for the sake of argument, an atmosphere.  It’s cold, none of the shops really speak to me and even ones like HMV don’t really exert a pull anymore preferring as I do to either watch music artists live and for FREE on YouTube or buying from eBay and places like that for those items I want and aren’t really prepared to spend huge amounts on.

At least you know what you’re getting with The Broad Street Mall.  It is what it is.  It does what it says on the tin.  You walk in, you can feel yourself losing the will to live, you have a brief look round then you leave feeling terribly dissatisfied.   The Oracle however promised so much in terms of development, jobs etc etc and yet delivers very little of anything except high-priced tat that no one really needs.  Boots is alright though.

Which is why I ended up in Heelas.  It’s not John Lewis even though that’s what it’s been known as since 2001, it’s Heelas.  To newcomers to Reading it’s John Lewis but what do they know?  It’s Heelas to me and countless other Reading-dwellers.  Heelas is a part of the psyche of this once great and now, slightly less great town.  I love Heelas.  I would imagine that most people who work there are on the Right side of the political spectrum, maybe I’m wrong but it has a Conservative sort of feel to it.  I’m of the Left but that’s okay.  I deplore shops like House of Fraser, Selfridges, Harvey Nicholls, Liberty and the like because there is a snobby feel to them but I’m more than okay with Heelas.  It exudes class but does so in a tasteful way, rather like the neighbour who owns a Jag but isn’t always out washing it and showing it off.

I realised that I had never been in to the restaurant/cafeteria within Heelas.  In all my 30-odd (and they have been odd) years of life, I realised I had never crossed the threshold between Women’s Wear and A Place To Eat.  I thought to myself “why should I deny myself the finer things in life?” and marched across.  I cannot describe to you the sheer exultant joy I felt when my feet crossed the imaginary line that took me into this hidden world – a place of shiny silver, polished floors and grim-faced staff.  I ordered a drink, paid for it and made my way over to the raised area beside the windows.

Looking out from where I was sitting, I suddenly had a glimpse of another world entirely.  Everything seemed so different.  I’d never seen my town from this angle and strangely, all that could really be seen were old buildings and trees, and a magnificent looking church – it was like being privy just for a split second, to the way the town must have looked before all the technical innovations that we now take for granted.  Before pedestrianisation.  Before all the chain pubs and coffee-houses.  It was wonderful.

I noticed a number of staff members (partners) discreetly looking down at their watches and some not so discreetly who were standing in the middle of the floor with their hands behind their backs looking at the last remaining customers and giving off a slight air of impatience.  From this I surmised it was nearly time to shut up shop and looking at my own watch, I could see I was right.  It was 5.10pm.  I thanked the staff and left there on a kind of high.  I made my way to the escalators, looking across at the glass lifts as I did so and wondered how perfectly fit and healthy people not laden down with bags and goods could justify getting in at the Ground Floor then getting out on the First.  Perhaps they just wanted to rest for a few brief moments and take in all this understated, tasteful opulence.

It wasn’t long before I was walking towards the side entrance, through the Menswear department and out into Minster Street.  It didn’t matter that the shops nearby all looked like they were going to go out of business very shortly or that there was no busker to annoy the hell out of me and make me feel guilty because I really didn’t have any spare change on me or was it that I did indeed have LOTS of money but was just holding my hands over all the cash in such a way that there was no rustle of coins as I passed.  Who knows?  All I did know was that of all the places in the world I could have been born into, I was born and raised in Reading.  This immediately depressed me somewhat but then I thought of Wrexham and Slough and I felt the mood shift, a very faint smile played across my lips and then it was gone.