Non-Fiction: Lingering Outside Of A Corner Shop On A Cool Spring Evening
A little piece of psychogeography posted to the original version of this website in April 2022.
Original Description: Wow, I've been away for a while, huh? I've been buried under a mountain of coursework, but I have managed to dig myself out, so hopefully I can start writing for pleasure again! Hooray! Anyway, have something nostalgic and wistful I wrote after going on a walk.
At last, spring has arrived in earnest. There are snowdrops sitting languid in the shade, and daffodils making the most of the sun; proud and leonine if just a touch scraggly. The sky has arrived prematurely at that particular shade of summery saturated blue, and the days are growing longer again.
It is pleasantly cool. Light jumper weather and perfect for a short jaunt into town and back. You are on the home stretch of your walk now, and you feel a hankering for a snack. The corner shop it is, then.
The corner shop has served your community for as long as you can remember. It has changed hands and names many times, but you will always refer to it by the name it bore when you were small. Everything about the journey there is worn by time into your psyche; the smell of the air, the cracks in the pavement beneath your feet, and the surrounding sights.
There is a park directly opposite the shop. Some boys play there with a football. No true game is taking place, just a lazy passing of the ball. A girl whizzes past them on a bicycle, moving downhill at a daring speed.
You were like them once, playing here with total youthful abandon. You wonder how you have changed so much while the place has stayed exactly the same. You have this exact thought every time you pass. On some days it does not trouble you, but on others it makes every fibre of your being ache under the weight of passed time. A part of you entertains the idea that you only changed because you failed to hold on to the good times hard enough, but another part, the adult part, scoffs and chases the fanciful notion away.
You enter the shop, some mechanism in the door buzzing to announce your arrival. The man at the till looks briefly up from his magazine and gives you a nod. You wave back.
You make a beeline for the sweet aisle by instinct, a holdover from the days when you didn’t know to worry about your waistline. You bend over to examine the colourful packages, crouching to the height of your former child self. Since when did everything get so expensive? Long gone are the days when you could walk in with a pound coin and walk out with an armful of sugary treats.
The tastes and smells are vivid in your memory. Foods so rich with food colourings they tasted like metal. Electrically bitter sherbet in colourful little packets. Chocolate from nameless brands with an aftertaste of cheap fat. You look at them all on the shelves and your nostalgia runs wild.
Then, the adult part of you takes hold again. You stand up straight and shake your head. You buy a sandwich and a bottle of water.
You go outside to consume them, leaning against a railing. You wonder how the hell you got so old.