Sunday Rain

Its Sunday again, a day of rest and play for sure, or is it? This is my second Sunday at work doing odd jobs while we have our wooden floor sanded and re lacquered, or whatever they do to make it look good again. Whilst the time is well spent, apart from this blog you may say, clearing paperwork and getting organised desk wise, Its Sunday, a day of rest and play, or is that in the past too?

This may be a deeper Sunday blog than first thought because as I was standing at the shop door waiting for Dave, a nice Ausie guy, who is "doing" the floor, I watched the rain and lots of people mooching around. Actually they were shopping in the rain, how silly! This made me look around to see how many shops were in fact open. Not too many from where I was looking, mostly the larger independents or national stores but enough to get people out and about shopping in rainy Bishop's Stortford.

I would imagine that the shopping "Malls" would be packed as usual, but at what cost? The population has only so much to spend and only so much time to spend it in. This made me question why we need ALL shops open on a Sunday. Surely this really is just greed by those shops who open, is it an economic necessity, or do they just want to grab a larger market share and deprive people a day of relative rest?


Thinking to myself is this progress or regress? Do I need to shop 24/7? Am I having to borrow money to fuel my shopping? Then I looked at the prosperity of the larger chain stores like Tesco, Sainsbury, Primark etc, etc are these companies destroying our way of life? They grab market share and gobble up the smaller shops who offer diverse ranges rather than only those that sell best. They take us away from the Sunday DIY, read the paper, a bit of gardening, wash the car, footy or swimming with the kids, a lunchtime pint, and Sunday dinner at 2:30 with time after to rest or walk the dog. Now it seems many people go shopping from 10am for a few hours, those who used to go to the pubs either don't or spend all afternoon in them because of the flexible licensing hours. Most people now don't go to the pub because they are shopping I suppose, dozens of pubs are closing every week, another part of the community along with the corner shop/post office closed down by open all hours, sell everything shopping.

Should everything revolve around shopping? Am I being a miserable old git? Personally I feel this whole subject is being driven by us but only because 24/7 shopping is easy. You don't have to plan your day or week, you can just go and get whatever you want whenever you want it. Doesn't this just make us lazy? Neglecting perhaps some important "downtime", family time or social interaction time?

What on earth has this got to do with Jewellery I hear you ask. Well, we are feeling the pressure to open on Sundays. More people now almost expect us to be open 10 till 4 on Sunday. I think this will only get stronger over time. I will not open every Sunday though we do open now in December, because everyone else does. Not that it is an important trading day, we almost always see the same faces who would shop with us anyway but its just a bit more convenient on a Sunday, so for us it is almost a customer service. It will only take one of the high St. Jewellers to open then we will have to reassess the response, unless of course we open first????

Good news from the Drewster (young Ed) he may have two tickets for Arsenal V Chelsea in a couple of hours. One for me, that is if Dave, the Ausie floor guy, gets the floor done in time, otherwise I could go shopping..!