Can you make a New Year’s resolution after the event? Apparently you can, because I did so yesterday – when I run out of basic food necessities or need that single item, as I so often do, I’m going to buy them at the local dairy, instead of the supermarket. It’s only a brisk 20 minute walk to our smallish local supermarket, and that’s in a shopping centre where I can also (and do) visit the doctor, dentist, hairdresser, postal centre and hardware store, so we’re really very well provided, but in the meantime, the little corner shops even closer continue to close.

You can see their ghosts every few hundred metres along busy roads, converted into flats and houses with rather large picture windows. Our nearest dairy, just at the top of our drive and opposite our bus stop, closed for business about 18 months ago. Even though it was bought by a craftsperson who uses the large open shop space to practise his trade, he wasn’t able to stop the zoning reverting from commercial to residential, so cannot use it as a shop. However we are lucky to have another extant dairy within 400 metres, on a busier road, and it is this one I have resolved to help keep in business. Nor is it a hardship – my favourite loaf of bread is the same price as in the supermarket, milk and spread a bit more, but well within the margin of what I would spend in fuel or time if I drove or walked the extra kilometer to save those few cents.

The time might come when it’s a real struggle to walk that hilly trip to the shopping centre, and then I’ll really need that little shop, so I’ll use it now, as well as the supermarket, and the wholefoods shop, and the farmer’s market, to make sure it’s still there then.