Out of mind
I recently had to kill some time on my childhood high street when I had a glasses based drama which led to to a poem. Because every thing does. I’ll get to the poem right at the end of this post, and even though all good poems speak for themselves, a bit of context (if you care to listen).
I found myself in a sit position
Which is to say, I sat on my glasses.
Twice. Within a week.
On their last legs I went to the opticianswho
a) patched them up
b) booked me in a week later for a full eye test to get new ones sorted out.
The new eye test and new frames got sorted without anything of note happening. I awaited a text message to tell me when to pick them up which was about another week. My old glasses just about held it together until they arrived.
Should have gone to
I went to the household brand who are good on social media. However, when I put on my new distance glasses every thing was a blur. I obviously assumed I was dying and a sharp deterioration in eyesight must have arisen in a one week time frame. It was the most logical explanation until I put on the computer screen distance pair and I could see for miles and what had happened. The wrong lenses were in the wrong frames. They were very helpful and magnanimous about the mistake and said they’d order in new lenses and call me back when I come back to get them swapped around. I know this has got boring, stick with me. The point will emerge although I don’t expect movie rights negotiations to kick in.
The pick up
On the day of the pick up I had to leave the glasses with the opticians for an hour, which meant killing time in my childhood high street. A place I had memories of taking my pocket money around shop after shop to make a decision which shop would get the money and what treat I’d be taking home on the bus. Woolies was a big winner usually, but our price and Chelsea girl and littlewoods all were put in serious contender performances in tempting me to part with my coins. An hour was easily wasted. The streets were busy, especially in the markets and on outdoor market days. Posters and badges were my go to browsing material at the markets. Wham, Kylie and Jason and smiley face badges I had no idea about the meaning of except they were fun and brilliantly colourful.
Now, before you tell me I must have been getting rose tinted glasses, I do also remember thinking my town high street was boring and had nothing that a sophisticated 13 year old truly truly wanted, but I know that all the shops were open and actively used. My hometown high street has even featured on a big Disney Tv show where they showed footage of the high street as I remembered it so I know I am not recollecting something that never existed.
But now the streets has so many boarded up shops and the ones that remain are augmented by charity shops , bargain shops and nail bars. i love bargain shops by the way, but they are no match for woolies. The closing down soon posters in windows have been there for too long. Lease opportunities sit vacant for far too long. And it infuriates me. That big out of town developments effectively took bigger businesses out of town on short lease agreements that are not sustainable and the big businesses all end up shutting down in the out of town development too. And I get even more infuriated when I know this town is not unique in how out of town planning transformed town centres for the worst. This is now a city centre and it deserves better.
The developers will have made promises about their developments that cannot have been fulfilled and it doesn’t matter as they have made their money without leaving a sustainable legacy to the people who need it. The people who live here and love the heart of here.
Wrexham is in the middle of a quite frankly magical moment with Hollywood coming to town and I cannot overstate how truly incredible that has been for the community. I ran poetry workshops in a school in the town in 2023 and children’s eyes were lighting up talking about a day at the racecourse. My heart could have burst with joy just listening to their poems. I have been to many pre and post Hollywood matches and the change in atmosphere and camaraderie is phenomenal.
But what I now wish, now I know magic can happen, is for more. Specifically to come to the town centre and reignite it into a place that is as vibrant and warm as the people who live here are.
This is to say
Here is the poem inspired by killing time in my home town high street
