Death of the High Street

Given that the economic downturn has been ongoing since 2008, it's surprising that more British household names haven't gone under.

We had Woolworth's which went into liquidation in 2009, but I struggle to think of any other high street stalwarts that we've lost. I'm sure there have been a couple.

So it's surprised me a little that now, four years into the downturn, we've lost Comet, Jessop's, HMV and Blockbuster, all household names, in the space of a single month.

Who knows which shop is next?

I guess the poor economic climate has finally caught up with the finances of some of these firms. They may have been hanging on until the economy picked up again. The concentration of bankruptcies in December and January indicates that they may have overstretched themselves in one last hurrah to try and gain business over the Christmas season.

Ultimately, though, it's pretty obvious what has caused these firms' demise - the internet.

Any shop selling electronic, branded goods, stands little chance of competing with the likes of Amazon. Amazon doesn't have to pay shop rents or hire sales staff, and so can sell the exact same product for much less. For the customer, the choice is a "no brainer."

Does this mean the death of the high street is nigh?

No.

It simply means that a reshuffle is underway.  Customers are working out for themselves which goods are best purchased on a computer at home, and which are best purchased face-to-face, in a high street shop. The high street has a huge advantage over the internet in more tactile products, like clothes, that people want to try on before buying, and in goods which simply cannot be sent in the post, which is why coffee shops and hairdressers are doing so well.

High streets will never disappear. We're stuck with them. We've built our towns and cities, immovable, around them.

Over the next few years we'll see the high street changing further. There'll be opportunities for new businesses to take advantage of vacant premises and lower rents to introduce themselves to the high street. These businesses will deal in products that people want to touch, smell, try on, eat, drink. There will also be a growth in the service industry as high street shopping is treated more as an "experience" in which people also want to take advantage of beauty treatments, look round galleries, and who knows what else?

The high street isn't dying. It's being reborn.

Goodbye to Scheduled Television

At Christmas, we got a SMART blu-ray player to replace our old DVD player. This means we now have easy access to internet television from the comfort of our living room.

I haven't watched much TV over the last few years, partly because Jana tends to watch it to unwind and chooses programmes of no interest to me, partly because I have so much reading I want to catch up on, but mostly because I'm not organised enough to plan ahead the programmes I want to watch.

Well, internet TV has been a revelation. We only have access to BBC iPlayer and YouTube at the moment, plus a month trial subscription to NetFlix, but this still gives me everything I need and more.

In particular I've got hooked on watching nature documentaries on the iPlayer. Within the last couple of weeks, I've caught up with the available back catalogues of Countryfile, Coast, Nature's Weirdest Events, Frozen Planet, a few one-off programmes, plus the first episode of the incredible new David Attenborough series, Africa.

The television is going to become a battleground once again between me and Jana.

And it got me thinking, surely this is the death knell of scheduled television? I mean, what is the point of having programmes playing at set times of the day when all of this is at our fingertips?

Yesterday, driving home from work, they were having a discussion on Radio 4's PM about the relative benefits of scheduled TV versus catch-up TV, and it was really very apparent that scheduled TV had very little going for it. The main argument in its defence was that it made it easier for people to stumble across programmes they might not normally seek out themselves. Well, to me that's another way of saying it forces people to tune it to programmes they don't really like.

I'm now toying with the idea of cancelling our regular TV licence altogether and going fully "catch-up." Jana isn't quite ready to get up "normal tv," but once ITV Player and 4OD are available I think she might be persuaded.

A New Year

Today was my second day back at work since the New Year. What an odd, odd time of the year this is. A whole mix of emotions caused by the end of the bubble that is Christmas-time and the shock of being back into the daily slog with nothing immediate to look forward to. A real uncertainty about whether the year ahead is going to hard, fulfilling, memorable, forgettable, or ... who knows what?

Yet it's also a time of year where renewal and opportunity are undeniably in the air.

By a quirk of the Christian calendar, Christmas and New Year come in quick succession meaning a prolonged period of festivities and indulgence come to an abrupt end once January arrives. The mere fact of seeing a new year documented on the calendar, "2013," feels strange and new. Midwinter has just passed and it won't be long before the first signs of new life start to emerge from the winter.

For me, 2013 is going to be the first full year of having a family of four. I'll watch Ben going through the same stages I watched Ellie go through two and half years before. Just today I saw him reach out and grab one of his feet for the first time, something I still clearly remember Ellie doing.

Ellie Grabbing Her Foot
(June 2010)

Ellie herself will be growing up too. My Dad said that one of his friends told him that 3 years old was the age that children really started interacting with you and while I'm not sure I agree with this I can certainly see that Ellie's general awareness and also speech have come on leaps and bounds very recently.  In August, Ellie will start nursery.

For myself, I'm hoping to keep up my new found love for blogging and I've also made a commitment (oh, alright then, a New Year's Resolution) to learn at last one new Czech word every day.

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas from the whole Hopton family.  This picture is actually from 24 December, because that's when the Czechs have their main Christmas celebration.

This is also the first ever picture of all four of us :)

The Hoptons
(December 2012)

Adopting

Every now and again I see or read something that reminds me how lucky we are to live in a modern western democracy like the UK.

Earlier this week, the UK government promised more support to speed up the adoption process for prospective parents.  It's a positive but hardly revolutionary announcement and I probably only gave the story a passing glance when I first read it.

Then today, in a completely unrelated story, Russia announced that it would no longer allow Americans to adopt Russian children.  What a bizarre concept!  Reading further it turns out that this is actually just one part of a tit-for-tat series of isolationist measures between Russia and the US.

Still, seeing this reminded me of the UK announcement and really drove home to me the importance of the incremental but progressive reforms that we excel at in this country.  We don't move forward by leaps and bounds, but we do always seem to be heading in the right direction.

Getting Ready for Christmas

It's three days until Christmas. I've genuinely not enjoyed this time of the year so much in a long long while.  Ellie is at the right age to start appreciating Christmas properly.  I've had a week off work already so I'm winding down and in the right mood for it all.  We're not traveling anywhere or hosting any visitors.

Ellie and Ben have both come down sick, however.  Ellie has got a vomiting bug of some kind.  She won't eat much, is always tired and whine-y, and is occasionally sick.  I'm writing this having just put her back to bed and cleared up another batch of vomit.

Ben has got an eye infection (a recurrence from a couple of weeks ago) and a stuffed nose which keeps waking him up.  We also think he's started teething.  Jana and I are sleep-deprived and shattered.

The thing with kids is how they bounce back.  Even during the day, most of the time you wouldn't know either of them is unwell.  Ellie helped decorate the tree.  She enjoys taking several baubles off at once, wandering around with them strung from her fingers, and then placing them back in a little cluster.  We bought Christmas crackers today so she's been placing them on the tree too.

Mum and Charlie visited recently.  In Edinburgh we heard Christmas pop music so my mum bought us a CD and Ellie keeps demanding it be played.  I recorded a video of her dancing and sent it back to my mum.

Jana is taking the opportunity of having me around helping with the kids by spending more time in the kitchen, cooking and baking to her heart's content.  We are eating our main meals at midday.  In the evening, we're eating Stilton and drinking port (well I am.)

By and large, give or take, this is what I imagined (and hoped) the run up to Christmas would feel like once I had my own family.

An Update

Since my last post I've got a job, got married, moved to Scotland, bought a house and had two kids.