Jonathan Dodd‘s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
When I was a small boy, walking to school and back home every day, I used to pass the local toyshop. In the window was a display of brand new shiny Corgi toy cars, parked in front of their boxes. I would always stop and look, just in case the display changed and new models appeared. I would check the prices and work out how long I would have to save up my pocket money before I could afford the one I had just decided I had to buy.
That was a long time ago. All of that belongs to the past. Nowadays, if I wanted to buy a Corgi toy car, I would pour myself a glass of wine, go on eBay and decide what I could afford before making an electronic payment and waiting for it to be delivered. I could be nostalgic about the good old days or I could say that everything is going to the all-powerful Helena Handcart, whoever she is. Or I could sit back, enjoy my glass of wine, and look forward to the delivery of my new purchase.
Change just keeps happening
The fact is that things change. They have always changed, there never was any time when everything was perfect, and there never will be.
We con ourselves into thinking that things stay the same and change is a disruption, but the truth is that anything staying the same is an anomaly. It doesn’t matter whether we like this or not, because change is like the weather or a glacier. It just keeps happening.
Here in England we like old things. The Americans are very jealous of us and our history, and they would adopt it and buy it all up if we were selling it. Of course we’re not selling it (yet) because we love it too much. We like to preserve buildings and things. Nowadays we call it ‘heritage’, and what we preserve is our idea of how things should have been rather than how they actually were.
Medicine, dentistry and plumbing
We also love TV programmes like Downton Abbey. I suspect we wouldn’t have liked to be one of the servants or gardeners in a real stately home in those days, and we wouldn’t have appreciated what passed for medicine or dentistry or plumbing either.
If HMV and or Blockbusters do close, and it’s not certain yet that they will, I shall mourn their passing and buy my music exclusively online. Until something else comes along and replaces that.
The missing shoe event horizon
Not that long ago, Douglas Adams wrote about a ‘Shoe Event Horizon’, where civilisation would be killed off by the proliferation of shoe shops.
It was an elegant idea, and it was completely trumped by a revolution in the shoe industry that practically wiped out all the high street shoe shops. I always thought we’d never manage without Woolworth’s. How wrong can we be?
The difficulty we have is because we’re not very good at imagining the future. The past is obviously familiar and the future is, by definition, unknown. So when we think about it all we tend to add in our emotional response. The past is comfortable and known and feels secure, even if we hated it at the time. It’s remarkable how the passage of a few years can cause the sharp edges to rub off.
The known unknown and the unknown known
The future can feel threatening because it’s unknown, but it doesn’t have to. I’m already looking forward to next summer, when we’re not threatened by snow and ice and it’ll be warm, and I’ve already forgotten how miserable and wet last summer was.
Sometimes things do change for the worse, but sadly we don’t know in advance and there’s not much we can usually do about it anyway. Internet sales have hurt some shops but not others, and they’ve been very good for the Post Office and various courier companies.
The Datsun Cherries are coming!
Back in the sunny Sixties when I was just a boy, the English car industry was about to be decimated by Japanese car imports. Not because of any conspiracy, but because we forgot to notice that there was competition out there.
Would I have bought a Datsun Cherry toy if Corgi had made one? I don’t know. Everyone was complaining about the effect on our own car manufacturing industry and buying them at the same time. Plus ça change, plus ca reste la même chose, as the French say.
Personally, I hope the Island’s HMV and Blockbuster outlets will stay open, and I hope their new owners will put in place a business plan to guarantee their survival and the future jobs of all their employees. I’ve lost jobs before, and it’s horrible.
I’m excited by what the future may bring, and at the same time, slightly anxious. Who knows what’s going to happen? I certainly don’t.
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
Image: Per Olof Forsberg under CC BY 2.0
Image: Liga Eglite under CC BY 2.0
Image: VitaGRAFICA under CC BY 2.0
Image: robinvanmourik under CC BY 2.0
Image: Sunbeam Free Photos Art & Fun under CC BY 2.0
