Category Archives: Around the UK

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The helpers and the help-myselfers in the shops

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There is such art, and so much skill, in the running of an excellent shop – one that attracts many, and offers cheerful service and affordable, worthwhile products.

Today I wandered down to Covent Garden in London. Covent Garden itself, and the streets around it, were like a flower garden of shops, all bright and beautiful and swarming with public. I joined the swarm for as long as my energy lasted, just looking, and wondering, and occasionally buying.

I was about a third of my way through my wander when I saw a brazen shoplifter in action, so brazen that I convinced myself he was part of the staff. He was well-dressed and middle-aged, and it was only when I saw him walk up the stairs and leave the building with his backpack stuffed with unpaid for goods, that I realised that he did not work there. I could only presume that the theft had been done with the co-operation of the member of staff who was standing as close to him as I was, and under the blind eye of the disinterested security guard on the door.

When I went back to the shop later in the afternoon I saw that the security guard was gone, and I heard that a member of staff was absent from the floor below where the incident had happened. I didn’t want to think about how many runs they’d managed that day.

As I walked away I wondered what kind of rent the excellent shop was having to pay in order to offer its goods to London … and I wondered how London would feel without such excellent shops.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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After the storm

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This morning, with the clouds sailing like great ships above us, we drove north from Cornwall. The county had just been battered by storm Ciarán, and it felt as if it was still trying to shake the wet and the wind from its coat.

The photograph above was taken just after the sun had risen. It was a bruised dawn but it turned into a beautiful day. In front of us lay the sea, green-blue and whipped with white horses, while behind us turbines and seagulls span across the sky. This was their kind of day. They danced with the elements, while we clung like limpets to the ground.

The further we drove the drier the land became. The rivers shrank, and the light gleamed, with rainbows arcing across the fields.

Now we are back, and I cannot hear the waves but I can still imagine them, and the families and dogs that will be blowing across the sand beside them.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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Where the sand meets the sea meets the sky

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Cornwall – the wind flies and waves scoop in long curls on to the sand. There are surfers out, paddling in wait of the perfect moment. Then suddenly it’s there, and they lift up quick as dragonflies to skim the white manes back to the shore.

We stand a few minutes to watch and then carry on with our walk. It’s not too hot. It’s not too cold. It’s not too wet. It’s not too sunny. Even our foot prints sink just enough, as we head on towards somewhere we’ve never been, or might have been once but can’t remember. We are undecided and unconcerned. It’s one of those days.

Our pleasure is in being out, in feeling the sun as we cover the ground in one direction, climb over the dunes in another, and then return the way we came.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023