Remember the changes to the town centre?

This was to be the great saviour of the town. Bringing new business and jobs. The chosen site had been abandoned for approx twenty years and originally was where my school originally stood.

Unfortunately, many of the shops in the older part of the town have closed and though jobs were created by this supermarket opening, only a few of those who have lost their jobs since have found work at this retailer. Many residents feel that it dominates the area and unless you have transport or are able to travel out of town to shop it is now the only place that you are able to buy food. There is little or no provision for taxis and you have to phone for one as you come out of the store or try and guess how long you will be shopping and it will take to get through the checkout. The lay-by that exists is always full of customers using the cash machines at the front of the store.

If you turn approx 90° degrees you will see the new park which has a new youth centre on the right of the entrance.

As the old one had seen better days and was demolished to make way for the new supermarket I suppose a replacement had to be built and in reality the town park is my old school's playing field which is now available to the public.

If you turn approx 45° degrees to the right and walk for 20 seconds this is the view that will greet you. The building contains the town library, school dentist and health centre. The paint is peeling, the wooden frames are rotting and the place leaks. You can see that various windows are boarded up. This is also to be demolished whenever the next phase of the development takes place.

This is a back view but it looks no better from the front, it is also very dirty. Its been much like this for the past twenty years. If you require a solicitor, a bank or charity shop, the older part of the town centre is for you. Due to high rents and rates and the town mainly being owned by a London company many local retails moved or closed. Only national retailers are managing to remain but even they are having hard times and some have been leaving.

I can remember the town centre as a child being quite spacious and better cared for and that was when traffic was allowed through the middle and it was not a traffic free zone.

If you want to find out more about a town, you just need to ask a taxi driver. I talked to two today on my shopping trip and between them and the little that I know, the latest rumour would suggest that ASDA may be taking over the retail outlet originally occupied by Sommerfield that closed some months ago after many, many years of trading here but for various reasons to do with employment laws and the fact that it is another food store, they are not allowed to trade until November at the earliest. But equally as was pointed out by one taxi driver, we have been promised a few possible retailers for the site which for various reasons having shown an interest appear to have decided otherwise. Another suggestion from my source of information was that as it is another food outlet showing the most interest such a competitor may find it difficult to get their application accepted.

There is absolutely no proof that this is the case. All you can say is that time will tell. But there is no guarantee that you will find out who all the retailers that showed interest were. Other suggested retailers over previous months have included Wilkinsons(a kind of store that sells anything from toothpaste to gardening stuff)and some kind of outlet that offers high quality branded sports goods.

However, I did get a bit of answer about why certain local retailers have disappeared over the years and the diversity of what is offered has been reduced.

My town was originally run by a different authority, it was taken over many years ago by a larger council, who no longer wanted to be responsible for the running and care of the retail area and as said earlier a London company purchased it. I have heard over the years of the possibility of some consortium or council plan that could result in the centre being brought back into local ownership but if you are not privy to what happens behind the scenes it is hard to know what is fact or fiction. So sometimes its best to stay quiet.

Having another food store would offer competition and revitalise the older part of town. And although smaller, it is big enough to give enough choice for most people because in general most people stick to the same products and have the same amount of money to spend each week, some days you only require bread and milk. Also, the previous trader offered home delivery which the new supermarket does not(unless you use the internet)so hopefully if someone decent takes over they'll offer this service again.

This blog entry is not quite right. It was almost perfect and I managed to lose everything and had to write the text and post all the pictures again and its taken over ten hours to get this far. I have started from scratch on numerous occasions to find that the pictures though they say that they are uploading, when I press the button to complete the task nothing happens and they refuse to appear.

And my last attempted picture refuses to upload no matter what I do, so for any future attempts to include pictures, any solutions are gratefully received.

I have also lost the comments of my very good friend Span who probably was the only person to see this entry before it went wrong. Curmy has also managed to see one version of this entry but I am unsure which one.

A very tired Gildy signing off and a very relieved Internet provider, I'm only allowed 200 hours per calendar month and at this rate I'll use up the time that I am allowed in the first week...

Footnote:Just maybe the problems with my photo's not getting onto the site were due to problems on the site affecting uploading timing out or taking a very long time to respond which I discovered when looking over the blogger status page. So perhaps I was doing all the right things and it was something out of my control.