Brainlessly passing the time last night, I found myself watching BBC’s Local News for the Elderly, AKA Points West, when something truly shocking happened. The stories completely washed over me until the “And finally … ” section. Then it hit me: Tarrs Ice Cream shop is closing.
Whose Ice Cream shop, you ask? Tarrs, at the bottom of Sandown Road in Brislington, Bristol, the road on which my grandparents lived, the Ice Cream shop I used on some Saturdays during my childhood and, to this day, whenever I am passing through Brislington, or Briz as Bristolians call it. By the start of winter, Tarrs will be no more.
In truth, I am not entirely surprised. Small businesses like Tarrs have struggled for many years as people prefer to use the mega stores like Sainsburys and Tesco, who have behemoth versions of their outlets nearby. And while their closure does not say so, the sheer costs of running a small business make it so hard to compete. A small part of me will die when the shop finally closes.
A “tub” of Tarrs’ magnificent vanilla ice cream was my treat when my mum had a few spare coppers, with red sauce at the bottom and nuts on top. First, on a Saturday lunchtime before settling down for an afternoon of sport on the telly with my grandad, I’d buy a nutritious portion of gloriously greasy chips, open not wrapped, with salt and vinegar, please, and once I’d demolished them, it would be into Tarrs. The chips were every week, the tub more like monthly, but it was a little piece of heaven in my life.
I suppose the big surprise is that they lasted so long. Almost all the independent stores of my childhood in Briz have closed down, many decades ago, half a century in some cases. Templar’s Fish and Chip Shop on Hollywood Road, Jefferies newsagent, the cobbler and the dairy in Briz village and two of the four pubs, all gone, along with most of the independent stores in Sandy Park Road. I wouldn’t call it progress but the vast changes to how we live and how we shop has changed everything, including how we shop.
Where I now live in South Gloucestershire, there are few independent businesses. A fish and chip shop, a dry cleaners, a couple of barber shops and a Chinese takeaway. In Briz, where I still go to every now and then, it’s a similar story. We can blame government, we can blame councils, we can blame anyone we choose, but the grim reality is that it’s down to us. But that doesn’t make it any less sad to lose Tarrs, or Tarsies as Briz people call it.
Their ice cream is truly great, far better than the slop that passes for ice cream in the superstores. But the family have decided to take the recipe with them when the store closes and it will be no more.
I won’t miss it that much, I suppose. Like everything that’s gone, Tarrs will become another memory, for me a particularly happy one, and there will be no further need to visit Sandown Road, with the ghosts having left once and for all.
Thanks for the ice cream, Tarsies. I’m going to miss you. Ice cream never tasted better.
