Applauding the closure of a high street shop
And why I prefer a ‘long summer’ - Story 126
I like this.
The Parish Bakery on Barnes High Street is still closed. The staff are taking a proper summer break. Further down the road, SW Ski has posted a similar sign. In a city where convenience culture reigns, shuttering for summer feels almost radical.
Notes & thoughts
Time in the age of the internet
The internet has redrawn our relationship with time. This is one of my generational challenges. The internet has upended so many parts of our lives. Changing our sense of time is one of the most profound. Groceries delivered in hours; hot meals arriving in minutes. I use the services too. But speed convenience with a cost. Not just the scooters once seen hurtling out of side-alley by the Bakery, but the risk of hollowing out the very shops that make a community feel whole.
A neighbourhood without shops is half a place.
They are more than bread and newspapers: they are daily anchors. Shops stitch us together: chance encounters, familiar faces, news exchanged at the counter. They put eyes on the street, making roads safer. They cut car use by putting essentials within walking distance, vital in Barnes, where the population skews older. And they give a place identity. Strip them out and an area slides into more bland commuter suburbia. Keep them and you have a much better chance of preserving resilience, pride and genuine community life.
Local traders vs national chains
The baker’s sign highlights something more than just another retailer. Only independents local traders close for summer. You won’t see M&S or Café Nero doing this. Chains have the scale and sometimes the business need to run year-round. Family-run shops have to stop if the family stops.
Barnes has always been unusual in this respect. A 2014 survey found that 96.6% of its shops were independent, the highest proportion in Britain at that time. A decade later, it’s time to rerun that study.
The Bakery closing then, is a reminder of importance of the mix of local and national retailers.
It also shows confidence. They trust customers to return. They resist the expectations of their chain neighbours and the millisecond precision of e-commerce. That sign is for us, its customers, saying, ‘we need a break, please do return when we do’. They can walk away because they know we will be back.
The case for a long summer
The sign also reminded me of another question: how long is summer?
For many, it ends on the August Bank Holiday, with a public holiday followed shortly afterwards schools re-opening.
Meteorologists define summer as 1 June to 31 August. Most of the tv and radio weather forecasters use this definition. By this reckoning, summer ends next Sunday. This is the Parish Baker's choice. But not mine.
My preference is the astronomical summer, which runs until 22 or 23 September. My reasoning is personal rather than planetary. June through September is packed with family anniversaries, and I prefer to stretch summer as long as I can.
That means, as I write, there are still four more weeks of summer left. A long summer, like a long holiday. And I think we deserve both.