Deep in the heart of suburbia there's always strange tales of goings-on behind closed doors of bored housewives and the like. I don't read them, but they're glaring in my face when I go to the newsagents with women's magazines on the second shelf like Woman's Own and Take A Break with their stories so ridiculous that they can't even be made up. It HAS to be true. It's the absolute truth.
What is transparent though is what's happening outside of these newsagents and into the wider high street at large throughout the country. You can't have failed to notice the amount of pawnshops and cash converters that have propped up in the recent years of a credit crunch and now hurtling into economic oblivion.
HMV and Blockbuster have announced in the last few days that they have been put into receivership with store closures seemingly imminent. Hardly surprising when you have competitors like Amazon and LoveFilm to deal with. But when dealing with the wider Internet at large, that's when you're absolutely up a dirty creek without a paddle.
Of course the recession and austerity measures have meant that the high street has taken a battering in terms of store closures and what has subsequently taken its place of what has been left behind. Near where I live In West Ealing, which is a town in West London that has been in dire need for the progress in development in business enterprise for instance, there was once a Woolworths, Marks & Spencer, McDonalds, Adams, Mothercare and WH Smith. In its place are now a Poundland, Wilkinson's, cash for electrical goods store, an estate agent and an Iceland. An Iceland taking the place of WH Smith. I'll let that sink in for a moment. Can you imagine Kerry Katona advertising books and stationery in your wildest dreams?
People quite obviously have less disposable income as belts and budgets tighten. Inevitably families will weigh up whether the new phone that's not really being used and is in good enough condition to sell on. Then there's jewellery, where an old piece of gold is pawned to pay off some bills, and returned back when paid off, on top of a rate of interest and a fee at the pawners discretion.
Personally, I had always felt some indifference when I was younger in thinking that these big stores were too big to fail somehow. Too established but for the most part recession proof with loadsamoney. But if the Roman Empire could fall after 500 years and if Simon Cowell can keep secretly running the country and controlling the population with flu jabs, then anything's possible. For the record, I'm aware that's libellous. SO SUE ME.
So as the streets are paved with discount stores and pawnshops, it's a bubble that is inflating still further. All bubbles burst though and it will be very interesting to see what takes its place.
Originally published on http://popularimpact.wordpress.com