This week’s story is inspired by all three photos, and thoughts of shadows.
What Time Do The Shops Shut?
The state of our high streets is a real shame. Every town and city centre in the land used to bustle with different businesses, where you could find whatever you wanted, and usually what you needed too.
Now a shopping trip is a march past empty windows displaying a few coat hangers grimacing near a pile of post. You can still source warm clothes in the winter, and find decent presents for aunts. But forget about purchasing bespoke cables for lesser known devices, or home exercise equipment.
At least in the centre of the town.
Younger readers might not realise how important these places were to people. Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, friends of all ages and sexes. Couples kissing for the first time. Heart attacks that lead to deaths near shoe shops. Engagements outside cinemas. Glorious memories of annual leave spent in cheap pizza restaurants.
You think all of that energy can just vanish?
Ghosts live in castles because they like to be alone. If you want to visit the shops again, you are going to have to work for it.
There are fields not visible from the motorway. Patches of grass you have to walk through woods to find, where the only light is the light of the moon. You will need to offer something pecuniary. Cash is perfect, and it does not have to be legal tender. In the other life they do not worry too much about time streams.
There are a few other conditions. Breaking certain sticks in a specific way, and whispering the correct words backwards. But get this right, and the shops will appear.
Some are so faded the grass shines through their front doors. Once you are inside all those memories will flood back. And the world will be yours. You can fondle carpet samples from long forgotten franchises. Select any film you want on DVD. Scoff down a chinese meal from buffets served long ago. Everything is at a different angle to us, and you will have to swipe through the air to collect your new belongings. You may even meet other folk who have completed the ritual too. It always pays to be polite. Remember, there is more than enough for everyone.
Be aware. Ghosts are still ghosts. These are not the originals, even if they are in the original format. Sometime you will feel a rumble under your feet, and a banging noise drawing ever closer. Then it is time to select your final purchases, burn some sage, and leave.
But that is fine. The old shops had to close too. At least now the shutters never roll down, and the lights hanigng over aisles filled with delights blaze on forever
