50 Sheds of Shit

by Rick Johansen

If you think, as Boris Johnson seems to suggest, that everything will be back to normal by Christmas, then the news from Bath they won’t be having their 50 Sheds of Shit in the run up to The Big Day, then you could be in a state of mild shock at the moment. The 50 Sheds of Shit, or the Bath Christmas Market as it’s otherwise known,is where you buy your tat for the festive period. If Aldi and Lidl have run out, then off you go to Bath where you can pay four times as much for the same thing. That COVID-19 has killed off the market for 2020 five months before Christmas suggests that not everyone shares Johnson’s optimism.

Joking aside – and I accept that it is very easy to make cheap jokes about the 50 Sheds of Shit – it’s a body blow for Bath. People come not only from Bath but from many miles away to peruse the various goods on display. It’s valuable not just to the Shed owners, but also to the hotels, pubs and every other business that benefits from the shoppers who come. I am sure shoppers will still turn out in some form or another but it won’t be as ram-packed as before.

In financial terms, it could be a disaster. Because of the virus, people who didn’t previously shop on line have now joined the millions of us who rarely shop any other way. I suspect that with COVID-19 still very much present in the country, perhaps in its second even deadlier wave by December, Bath, like every other city centre will be struggling to attract all that many people to come on down, always assuming, of course, that we are not back under lockdown by then.

Christmas shopping is never one of my favourite activities. Bristol has a pseudo German market where you can buy enormous sausages that taste like cardboard and cost an arm and a leg, steins of the types of lager Germans prefer to export than drink themselves (Schlussmeister: brewed in Daventry and as German as cricket itself) and any number of sheds – the ones that didn’t make it to Bath – full of sugar-heavy confectionary. The bonus, I suppose, is that it will be easier to see the queues to get in the Broadmead shops given that social distancing is certain to still be in operation.

No matter how you look at it, shopping as we know it – like actually going out and buying things – is dying on its arse. It was dying before COVID-19 came along and the process has accelerated irretrievably. As the rise of the machines removes the need for people to actually make things, the internet will enable us to do things a different and, in my opinion, better and safer way. Let’s face it: what’s safer? Sitting in a crowded bus and then going into crowded shops or collecting a parcel from the Amazon Prime driver?

In terms of public health, the postponement of Christmas markets was inevitable. The only question is whether, in the next few years, once a vaccine for COVID-19 or at least good treatment is available, we return to our old ways. Some will, I’m sure, because like some of us enjoy listening to music, reading books, plane and trainspotting (me), there will be people whose hobby is shopping. All being well, the 50 Sheds of Shit will be back soon enough. It will at least mean we are back to some kind of normal.

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