Future of Retail in Charlbury

Sat 30 Jun 2007, 12:50

There are occasions when I wonder what sort of fantasy planet some people live on. What is the point of talking about what shops Charlbury "wants" or "needs", as if Charlbury was some strange creature with a mind of its own? It isn't. It is a place inhabited by real people, and every one of them has the ability - to one extent or another - to choose where to do their shopping. Yes, the laws of economics apply here. Retailers which sell things that people want to buy will flourish. Those who don't will fold. This is how things have always been, and (unless we were to move to some sort of command economy) is how things have always been. Those who prefer the command model perhaps didn't travel in Eastern Europe 20-odd years ago. It wasn't a great shopping experience.

The plain fact is that several of the businesses which have vanished in recent decades have done so precisely because they failed to move with the times, or because they were operating on a business model which no longer worked. There were 16 pubs here in the nineteenth century, and now there are only four. You could, if you wished, suggest that this was the result of some strange and sinister conspiracy. But it's more credible to suggest that it is result of profound social changes. Victorian England drank tea and beer: not wine, whiskey, coffee, mineral water, and all the other choices which are routinely available to us. Charlbury is no longer an isolated rural community whose economy was based on manual labour - and a thirsty workforce with limited opportunities to spend their money on other forms of entertainment. More recently, I am sure we can all think of food shops which went under because they failed to move with the times, providing 1970s food that few people any longer wanted. Even David Whittaker's secondhand bookshop fits into this pattern. It wasn't that it wasn't a good shop. It was excellent. But canny bookseller that he was, David clearly saw the writing on the wall: the traditional business-model of the small town antiquarian bookshop simply doesn't work. Dealers and customers now operate almost exclusively on the net, a model which seems to suit both parties well. So the disappearance of that shop had nothing to do with Charlbury, but was part of a wider pattern, and one which though in some ways inconvenient in other respects occurred because it suited everyone, buyers and sellers alike.

In general terms I think we do pretty well here. Despite our small population base and that fact that were on not on the way from anywhere to anywhere else, we still have a station, a post office, four pubs, and a small array of shops. We also have decent public transport links to local towns, to Oxford at least, as well as access to telephones for remote shopping, and in many cases now to the net as well. Many rural communities do far worse. But my final comment has to be in defence of the Good Food Shop. What on earth do people mean, "not a proper deli". I have never heard anything so absurd. It's an excellent shop? What on earth do people expect? Fortnum's? More fantasy planet, I'm afraid.