Open all hours.....

....tonight I will be dreaming shop-girl dreams again! Seeing an empty shop & those immortal words 'To Let' is what triggers the most delightful daydreams.....serving in a shop,standing behind a counter,wrapping things in tissue,putting them in paper bags,tidying shelves,folding,displaying....simple aspirations,considered a fairly low rung on the career ladder I guess,but what a joyous vocation & to have your very own emporium-can you imagine? I can.....& I do,I have been imagining ever since I can remember & I have a terrible memory,but I can picture all kinds of shops from my very earliest days....the fabric shop with the scent of fresh cotton & the lovely sound sharp scissors make cutting cloth,tubes of buttons,paper patterns & pattern books,reels of rainbow threads......ironmongers shops all metal & wood,bristles & iron,balls of twine,buckets,mousetraps,fly-papers &  a smell like a garden shed on a sunny day.....the gruesome butchers shop with the sawdust floor,Mr Idris Stone hacking away with his cleaver & wrapping trimmings for the cat......post office counters,brown paper,ancient greetings cards,colouring books,the wet spongy thing for sticking your stamps & a pen on a chain.....the wonderous cave of a village shop,dark & enticing,penny sweets (halfpenny even) white mice,sour cherries,shrimps-sweets lined up in jars-aniseed balls,cola cubes,sherbet pips,pear drops,rainbow dust,coconut mushrooms-little tastes of heaven in a white paper bag,cards of elastic,shoe laces,combs & fuses......& as for the bakers,surely cake counters were made for little girls like me,to press up against the glass so that you could smell those synthetic concoctions of coloured sponge,hundreds & thousands,pretend cream & fondant-my granny worked in such a shop & smelt like that all the time! Is it any wonder I fell in love with shops at an early age & love them still,though the shops of my memory are just that,replaced with their modern day lack lustre counterparts-just somewhere to buy things with none of the ceremony. The shop in the picture still stands-the tales it could tell,my father in law worked there several years ago during its stint as 'Victoria Wines' & he says the upper floors were still full of remnants of its glory days as a grocers,tin signs,crates & display cards-all unceremoniously dumped!! The vacant shop I spyed today had its original spirit,lovely curved windows & pillars,floorboards,a proper doorstep too,the stuff of dreams & I'm sure I heard the ring of a till.......