When I was young most local shops provided a delivery service.

The butcher’s boy, the baker’s boy, the grocer’s lass.

Slowly but surely these delivery services disappeared with the development of self-service supermarkets and the like along with more people owning cars, making a trip to the shops and bringing back the now weekly shop more doable.

Exceptions were the very elite and expensive shops who carried on making deliveries to their privileged clientele. Anyways, shopping in person for anything less than clothing or jewellery was below such people.

How times change. These days it seems that almost everyone has everything, okay, many things, delivered. It’s the privileged middle class liberals that now seek to show their heart health and environmental credentials by walking, biking or gods forbid, running to the local shop, deli, bodega. They do this maybe two or three times a week or more. Fresh vegetables, sourdough bread and boxed oat milk in backpacks and panniers.

instant karma
the butcher boy’s bike
develops a flat

Paul Conneally
May 25th 2022