Keep It Indie
Of all the ways in which I have made a holy show of myself in public, I think the most ridiculous was bursting into tears in a supermarket in South Africa at the sight of mustard. I was young, I’d been travelling on my own for 5 months, I’d finally succumbed to homesickness and seeing the slogan ‘Colman’s of Norwich’ finally finished me off. I sobbed loudly and bought it. I don’t even like mustard ffs, yet that tin is still somewhere in my box of memories from the trip. It was a familiar and comforting reminder of home. Of Norwich.
Not for much longer, obviously. Which is quite shit, not least for the people whose jobs are being lost. Add that to the recent news that two local independent businesses – The Reindeer, and Woollf & Bird – are being forced to shut up shop, you could be forgiven for thinking that there’s increasingly less room for Norwich based businesses to survive, let along thrive. And that gets right on my tits.
Because this is Norwich, fuxake. We have brilliantly individual and fantastically varied shops, pubs and businesses run by people who do it for no other reason than they want to. They’re not identikit, bland, homogenised prefabricated units shipped in under orders from head office, but owned and run with love by people who do it because they want to, because they want to share what they have to offer with us, and because (usually, but fairly crucially) they’re damned good at it too, whether that’s making coffee, serving food, making things, offering a professional service or many other examples I can’t actually think of right now. They key is that it’s personal, because they genuinely give a toss about it. It matters to them, and it should matter to us to support and reward them with our cold hard cash money. Or we’ll end up losing these special places and names that make this vibrant and beautiful city such a wonderful place to be. ‘Of Norwich’ should be something to celebrate and champion, because this is our city.
