Cheese shop

An Eco self crisis. Gourmet cheese shop on the local high street is to close, expelled by rising rents on an increasingly yummy mummified street. Food Neurotic Friend is outraged, a founder member of the “Save the Banstead Road” committee. Not a particularly successful campaign, I think to myself, counting on two hands the number of new chain fashion shops which have intruded in the last six months. It was bad enough before, when you could barely walk a step without tripping over a nanny with child, but now you can’t even buy a block of Welsh Caerphilly. But before you couldn’t get anything from Whistles either, a staple of Eco Self’s wardrobe, conveniently moving into the space left by the sadly departed cheese shop, effectively reducing my carbon footprint by reducing my fashion commute. “Perhaps the cheese shop will be more profitable” I tell FNF, “without the overheads. They’ll get a stall at the Farmer’s Market, I’m sure.” Just to check my facts, and cheer up FNF despite his committee’s failed efforts to keep things local, I make my last purchase from the cheese shop, a pungent Stinking Bishop. “Where are you going next?” I ask, optimistic of plans for expansion, but their response is non-committal. “You could try the Farmer’s market,” I suggest helpfully. “That’s only one day a week,” the owner replies, but I am convinced that cheese shopping is more of a weekend pursuit anyway, the one day Cheese Sabbath where all wheat and dairy allergies are ignored, and diets get thrown to the wind. I make a mental note to never meet FNF with a Whistles shopping bag in tow.