It’s a shame to see a small town bookshop close.
The Neath Bookshop in Neath town centre is currently holding a closing down sale.
50% off everything.
Amongst all the usual suspects, there were a couple of Rachel Tresize’s books for sale.
We opted for Cyril Treharne’s ‘Around God’s Acre (in South Western Wales)’ (Llanrwst, Gwasg Carreg Gwalch 2006 - ISBN 1-84527-087-8) : “This book takes us on a journey around some of the most interesting churches and churchyards in Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion and Gower.”
Priceless.
Well worth three pounds fifty.
Nowadays the small independent bookseller faces being crushed between the mighty monopolistic supermarkets and their heavy discounting and fending off global giants like Amazon who announced earlier this year that they were investing in large distribution centre near Neath. It’s no surprise to see so many bookshops closing.
It has been another lawless weekend in ‘Wild West’ Aberdare Town.
Monday is the day that traders pick up the pieces after the weekend’s orgy of violence and vandalism.
This weekend, the windows of the Burtons menswear shop on Canon Street were kicked-in.
The windows of the Carousel Amusements on Commercial Street were kicked-in.
And the Barnado’s Charity Shop selling books on Commercial Street did not escape having windows kicked-in.
Both streets are covered by CCTV cameras which - allegedly! - provide more effective policing.
All the vacant shops in Aberdare are a reminder of just how difficult a battle traders face today.
It’s such a pity to see the broken windows in Aberdare week after week.
Who cares ?
Perhaps one day they will close all the shops, bulldoze them over, and extend the Tesco Supermarket car park.
The BBC demonstrates how to milk a news story to death by running the Hindu cow story again today.
The bullock in question has tested positive for TB.
Perhaps BBC Wales will bring their brassy reporters and cameras in a few months time and televise bullocks coughing-up blood should TB take hold in the area.
Photo : Screenshot of the BBC Wales online news website today. The BBC has devoted endless hours of coverage to this story during the past few weeks… all very generously funded by you, the TV license-paying public!
Caught in the act of tearing up the Welsh countryside! Here is a photo of National Grid’s gas pipeline near Llanigon, north of Brecon.
The photograph was taken in mid June 2007. It is an ugly site to behold. The gas pipeline is a giant industrial phallus imposed on Wales by planners in London. A few corporations will benefit from this project. It will do little good to resolve the peak oil crisis we face in the next few years.
But do we not accept all the noise and the pollution ? Do we not rejoice at the smell and smoke that remind us of our industrial might ?
Ralph Borsodi’s book This Ugly Civilization (1929) reminds us of how man accepts the ugliness of his own creation :
THIS is an ugly civilization. It is a civilization of noise, smoke, smells, and crowds–of people content to live amidst the throbbing of its machines; the smoke and smells of its factories; the crowds and the discomforts of the cities of which it proudly boasts.
The places in which the people work are noisy. The factories are filled with the recurring, though not the rhythmic, noises of machines and the crash and clatter incidental to their operation. The offices, too, are noisy with the rat-tat-tat of typewriters, the ringing of telephones, the grinding of adding machines. The streets on which the people move about, and around which they work and play, resound with the unending clatter of traffic–the roar of motors, the squeaks of brakes, the shrieks of sirens, and the banging of street cars. And even the homes in which they are supposed to rest are noisy because they are not only packed close together but built tier on tier so that the pianos, phonographs, and radios in them blare incongruously above, below, and on all sides of them.
The people of this factory-dominated civilization accept its noisiness. For noise is the audible evidence of their prowess; the inescapable accompaniment of their civilization’s progress. The greater the noise, the greater the civilization.
* * *
More photographs of the gas pipeline on Flickr.
There are many of Ralph Borsodi’s books available for free at the Soil and Health library.
A montage of photos taken today in Commercial Street and Canon Street.
It is a depressing vision.
In parts it looks like a wasteland.
These streets are in the choicest retail district of Cynon Valley.
All the shops in the postcard have closed.
How can small shops compete against giant-sized corporations that encircle Aberdare like jungle beasts, pawing away at the easy prey in the centre ?
How long before some megalomaniac supermarket opens a ‘convenience store’ within Aberdare Town itself, to kill off even more of the retail landscape ?
Giant corporations - principally supermarkets - destroy choice and diversity in Aberdare. And in villages across the Valley, they destroy all forms of retail life. It is a ’scorched earth’ policy.
If you can buy a loaf of bread in your own village, you are lucky. Think about it. Many people in Cynon Valley have no local shopping facilities selling good quality nourishing food.
If Aberdare Town is a depressing dump, it is because we have let it become such a thing. By allowing our politicians to mis-represent our interests and gild the pockets of corporate capital, by tolerating the mendacity of the media who fawn at the feet of the rich and powerful, we have chosen to create this wasteland on our own doorstep.
