Some of them appear to think the reason for this is that there aren't enough signs pointing to where the shops are. Oh, right. That will explain all the baffled pedestrians with empty bags, pacing up and down the seafront, searching for food, lottery tickets and packets of fags. If only we had thought to show them where the shops are.
What has not occurred to some of these shopkeepers is that people don't want to buy what they have to sell. The latest casualty is Martins, one of the bigger units in Broad Street: a good place to buy lollies, fireworks and, if you're so inclined, a specialist pornographic magazine. But not much else. It was a dreary, muddled, joyless place, in which staff would earnestly explain that your kids were not allowed to hold the sparklers they were selling you. I dread to think what advice the sales assistants gave to the blokes buying jazz mags.
But it's gone, and in its place will soon stand a shiny new WHSmith. This is perhaps curious, because Smith's itself is often accused of only selling stuff you can find everywhere else (though perhaps not in Seaford). But let's be honest: it will add a little bit of class to Seaford's main shopping street, even if it's likely to go down like a lead balloon with the independents it will compete with.
But there is a catch. Smith's has a policy of not selling porn, in sharp contrast to the Martins approach which appeared to be to cater for every conceivable fetish with its top-shelf offering. Maybe customers who are affected by this sudden withdrawal of their favoured reading matter will picket WHSmith when it arrives. Me - I'll push my way through the placards and breeze straight into Smith's on day one. Where else in the town can you get inkjet cartridges for a Hewlett Packard Photosmart C4180?
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