The Shop on Memory Lane

Corner shops are becoming a thing of the past these days. The closest we come to the old fashioned corner store is probably the convenience store. The one you go to when you run out of milk and don’t want to go all the way to the supermarket.

There is a shop I remember from childhood. I only went there a few times. It was next door to my uncle’s house in the seaside town of Brightlingsea, England. On a couple of occasions we stayed at his house for a couple of weeks holiday while he took his family on a trip.

I was six or seven years old, and because it was so close I was allowed to go there on my own. Sometimes mum or Nanny, as we used to call our grandma, would send me to get something for them. I remember being sent there once to get one egg. That seemed pretty odd to me even then. I remember Nanny saying to me that she liked to send me to the shop because I always brought back change. She made it sound a very clever thing to do.

I don’t have any photos of Brightlingsea, although we might have some postcards somewhere, and I have no idea if that little shop is still there. I remember the name of the street. Queen Street, and Google maps tells me that there is a Tesco Express in the street but I’d be surprised if it was the same building. I don’t remember what it looked like but it was the only shop in a residential street.

We have a sort of corner shop at Sisters Beach. It’s the General Store, the only shop here. It sells takeaway food, choclate, ice cream, papers and a few grocery lines. A couple of nights a week they make pizzas and Chinese food to order. Until recently there was an adjoining room called The Pear Tree Cafe where you could eat in. Hopefully, we’ll get that back at some point. We pick up our mail at the shop but you can’t buy a single egg there.