Greengrocer's in Queens Arcade, Hastings
Outside Queens Arcade, in Hastings town centre, there is a sign saying "Shopping Mall". This is misleading. Shopping malls are expanses of sheet marble, are full of chain stores, and have become soulless temples of consumerism. Arcades, on the other hand, are intimate, with small shops on a human scale. There is no merit in being a mall. An arcade wins out every time.
The horsemeat scandal may bring us back to small traders whom we can trust, in preference to the supermarket monoliths. Apart from dubious labelling, however, I have another gripe about supermarkets: their overpackaging of fruit and vegetables. I understand why they need to do this: the packs of four ready-to-eat pears, the carefully graded runner beans, the organic blueberries, are all flown in from places like Chile and Morocco, and have to be protected on their long journeys. But unpacking the shopping at home and landing up with a pile of plastic packaging on a weekly basis is enough to make the most hardened consumerist think something's wrong.
So the answer for me has become: go to the greengrocer in the arcade. I can take the fruit and vegetable straight off the stall, transfer it to my basket and then to the shopping bag without any packaging at all - bypassing even a paper bag if I feel like it. And I have the added satisfaction of supporting a small trader. It's enough to make one feel positively smug.
Antony Mair
It was also, in a workshop in this arcade, that in 1923 John Logie Baird built what was to become the world's first working television set using items including an old hatbox and a pair of scissors, some darning needles, a few bicycle light lenses, a used tea chest, sealing wax and glue.
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