Passing Trade

When I walk down the high road where the main shops are in the east London suburb where I live. I have often thought: ‘How the hell do these shops make any money? Maybe there’re a front for something.’
Well since the recession a lot of the shops have closed down, especially at the end of the high road. They’ve been boarded up for a while now and a doubt if even a charity shop would open up there.
There’s a few shops that are hanging in. A shop that sells art work, a women’s clothes shop and a shop that sells modern design lamps and tables and stuff like that for the home. But if you want a paint brush or hoover bags then forget it. You have to go to a big DIY store for that.
Its become a one dimensional high road that’s all about eating and drinking. There’s supermarkets, takeaways, restaurants, cafes and pubs in abundance.

The high road where I work still has a healthy mix of shops, and they all seem to be doing good business. All apart from any shop in the arcade. The only constant shops in there are a café and a beauty parlour for dogs. The rest are a constant turn over. Traditional sweet shop, six months, clothes shop, six months, fancy dress shop, six months, shoe shop, six months, physic reading place, six months. She should’ve predicted that that wouldn’t last long.
What do they expect when there’s no passing trade.

Are great place for passing trade are shops in airports. Well its not really passing trade its more like: I’m stuck here with nothing but these shops until I can board my flight and I need to get rid of this foreign money trade.
But in all the times that I’ve been to an airport I’ve never seen anyone buy a pen from the pen shop. Never. How does this shop survive? It’s a pen, so what if it looks nice and expensive, it’s a pen and it writes. I’ve never received a birthday card and thought, ‘That looks as if it was written with a nice pen.’