Bill Greenwell Hear their doors and cash-tills close, Play their dirges, sing their blues, Dolcis Shoes and Bargain Booze, Ottakar’s and Rumbelows.
Each a loser, once a winner, Laid low by a store bacillus — Where are Freeman, Hardy, Willis, Where is Lilley, where is Skinner?
Soon they’ll vanish altogether Like Lipton, Dillons, Dunn and Co. — Even Past Times had to go With Littlewood’s and Land of Leather.
Where assistants leant and dreamt, Tumbleweed blows idly through: Fine Fare, Netto, Comet too — Even Poundworld’s not exempt.
Alan Millard Stop all the socks; return the tops and ties, Prevent the buyers ordering for the stores, Silence all the shoppers’ protest cries And grieve, for BHS has locked its doors.
Let Carpetright weave patterns of remorse And strip its rugs of all their fancy frills, Tell Toys ‘R’ Us to shroud the rocking horse, Let Poundworld ditch its coins and close its tills.
They were my life, my joy, my bliss, my all, My daily jaunts to join the happy throng, My High Street treasure chests, my shopping mall; I thought they’d always be there: I was wrong.
Blockbuster, Woolworths, Maplin, all closed down. Board up windows, whitewash every pane. Buy goods online and go no more to town. For nothing now can stir its heart again.
W.J. Webster For years when towns were bound with national chains, The local shops still reigned on their parade, Till supermarkets, built on vast domains, Bought bulk, sold cheap and sucked away their trade. With butchers rare and grocers obsolete, All small-scale shops were species under threat, While any that survived were yet to meet The toils that would enmesh them from the Net. A finger click was trigger to their slaughter As people rushed to use this new world order From sites, untrammelled by mere bricks and mortar, That brook no kind of limit, heed no border. With bookshops bookies now, bank branches lopped, It’s charities alone that hold their ground: The Amazonian flood cannot be stopped, As we look on and see the High Street drowned.
Jane Moth Whose next after Next? Not Primark for one. With gaps in its teeth The high street clings on. While Oxfam has closed And M&S stutters, More windows replaced By huge eyeless shutters. Where now there’s a Betfred There once was Miss Green’s, Famous for bacon and biscuits and beans. And that shop on the corner Which sold knits in Courtelle, Was briefly a vape shop Till that closed as well.
Paul Carpenter Now fades the glimm’ring streetscene into dusk, Where once proud trades were plied with dignity There lies bereft a bare depressing husk: No faith, no hope, but shops of charity.
Far from the fadding crowd’s revised remit The rousing up and shaking of the limbs; ’Tis but the moving finger will have writ The orders that will satiate their whims.
Why cross the portal of some clapped out store? Why waste upon ‘Good morning’ vital breath? Why bother step outside a closed front door To save the high street from untimely death?
And thus the tumbleweed will find its home Displacing sullen clerk with distant pout; No more in teeming streets will shoppers roam But stay within for fear of missing out.
Basil Ransome-Davies The TK Maxx in Market Square Was once a Woolworth store. Farewell, Ann Summers’ fetish wear, And BHS? No more.
Charity shops adopt the space Where many big brands dwelt, While budget outlets move apace To suit the tightened belt.
A Bistro’s almost every joint That owns a microwave, All flattering to disappoint The feinschmeckers they crave.
The pizza and the pasta–ah! These deathless afternoons Spent haunting B & M’s bazaar, Adrift in Wetherspoons.
You are invited to supply a poem inspired by the periodic table. Please email entries of up to 16 lines to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 25 July.
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