Long Live the High Street

They say Britain is a country of shopkeepers.
Long let it be so.
There are so many cute little shops near my house here in west London -- just one after another.
And they're especially adorable now in the run-up to the holidays, their wares just so stylishly displayed behind gleaming windows.
The high street is lined in Christmas trees, and the flower sellers' baskets are overflowing with gorgeous wreaths, poinsettias, big red berries, tall red lilies.
Today was crisp and sunny.
Stunning.
I love the way couples were buying their Christsmas trees on the high street and then carrying them home together the few blocks home. With the baby in the pram.
I love the whole high street thing.
My son says I'm getting boring with it.
Anyway, I hope it's not under threat.
Because the truth is, even though I love all the little shops, and adore walking the quaint streets looking in the cute windows, I've hardly bought a thing.
And that's a problem, I know.
You can see it.
Sometimes it's hard to distinguish one shop from another.
But I still love them all.
Many shops are hanging on by their fingernails. The recession's been hard here, and credit tough to come by. They're predicting lots of closures of small high street businesses after Christmas.
I can see already, that in the nine months we've been here, quite a few places have turned over.
Some shops, I can tell, have been here forever, and are popular -- and busy.
Others not so much so.
But then, when a place closes down, so far, something else takes its place pretty quickly.
At least around here. Which is an affluent area.
Another shop seems to take up where the last one left off, because well, Britain is a land of shopkeepers.
Long let it be so.