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