JINXED

as soon as i hear the news
i hope against hope it ain't true...
over in harborne
doing my xmas shopping
i wander into a small independent book store
hidden among the charity shops and estate agents
by the name of bond's
the place has been there for years
but i've never been in before
not having lived around here for a while
it's a poky little store
with a limited number of titles
but somehow it manages to stock
a whole pile of little gems
that you'd never find browsing through a place like waterstones
in the cooking section
there's a fascinating book about all that's wrong with britain's bread
the chorleywood system and all that
and how to bake it properly
in the biography section
there's an auto-bio written by paul smith
a local cricketer who went off the rails
nearly lost it all but pulled himself back from the brink
i pick up a copy of 'happiness' as a present for friends
that's sitting just where i know it will be on the wellbeing shelf
the environment section is full of stuff i ain't come across before
i limit myself to the earthscan atlas of climate change
until i get religion
and can't resist a cartoon booklet entitled 'the bible from scratch'
at the till
i gush to the owners
about how much i like their shop
a little oasis in the desert...
now the small notice taped to the glass window confirms the worst
they've struggled to stay open
but are having to bow to the inevitable
oh what a tragedy!
but i should've known
so many of the best places i've discovered over the years
have almost immediately shut
take mildred's veggie cafe in soho
that down-at-heel food emporium
that served up bowls of tastebud-ravishing nosh
then closed...
then there was edam
another restaurant we found in seoul
near our first house
a mellow place with cool decor
and an imaginative menu of mock-duck-style tofu dishes
the next time we went back it was gone...
just as we were leaving korea
the latest casualty was closing up
my favourite coffee shop
with the gentle cheerful owner
who always asked me about hannah
who knew how to fix my coffee
just the fussy way i liked it
and would tut dispprovingly at her 'arbeits'
as they got my order wrong
but the building owners wanted her to pay
to get the shop remodelled
and she wasn't up for that...
what did all these places have in common?
they bucked the trend
they went for quality
they tried to do things differently
on their own terms
and in their different ways
i guess they all paid the price...