AN ESTABLISHED SOCIAL LAW

It seems a well-established, social law that the frequency of shop
visits increases in inverse proportion to the distance from house to
shop. And, no doubt, it is also an established, social law that
"near-ness" encourages sloppy, weekly-grocery planning.

Our housing estate had four shops, in a bunch, at the top of our
street. Two of the four shops, I remember well. They gave the
impression of being "stable" shops: The same owners, same merchandize,
same window displays, extending over many years.

Half of my youth was spent "just running a message up to the shops,"
so I am well-qualified to discuss them. And they were a just the
convenient, 100-yard's sprint, for a small boy to run and bring back a
family-size tub of not-yet-melted ice cream.

The other two shops were unlucky shops, which had seen (with
poltergeist-like relish) a long succession of would-be tycoons come and
go.

Over the months there came and went a rapid succession of dry
cleaners, iron mongers, electrical shops, one fish &; Chips take-a
-way, a vegetable and, --wow-- a Chinese restaurant.

Perhaps they were haunted by the ancestors of this former farmland or,
perhaps, it was only that the good-working people of Ardrossan were not
ready, yet, for their exotica.