Down with shops! Down with shopping!

On The Guardian website, recent articles have talked about how these strange times of coronavirus offer us a chance to do things differently. Bozo the Clown is panicking at the thought that workers will not return to the town and city centres, thus making them a wasteland and forcing shops, cafes, restaurants and pubs to close. A lot of the people commenting on these opinion pieces have said that they will never bother going to a shop again: they can buy everything online already, including food, which is delivered to their home.

I'm all for making wise use of the resources that we have and not buying things out of mere boredom, but online shopping is not that great either.

A couple of months ago, I was tempted to buy some clothes online because the advert of a certain company had caught my eye and the clothes looked great. Not necessarily stuff you can get in shops around here. I bought four items and when they arrived...let's say I was 'disappointed'. The colours and the quality were not what the photos implied. I've worn two of the items, but it's not been warm enough to wear the other two, which I bought for a holiday in Spain.

Internet shopping is also like looking at a map on a small, hand-held GPS device. You can only see a small part of what's on offer at any one time. That's why, when I lead walks, I take a bit paper map with me, so I can see the big picture all in one go.

Two days ago, I went to Karstadt to use up a Christmas gift voucher before the department store closes. I was in the haberdashery department looking for material. When you look at something, it might look nice, but it's only when you feel the fabric can you get a good idea of what it's really like, e.g. thickness, softness, feel, quality. How you can do this online, I don't know.

When I go into a bookshop to buy a book, I go to see what I can find. I don't enter with a pre-conceived idea - well, not most of the time. I do if I need to buy a text book for a language course. I let my eyes wander over everything that's on offer and see what calls out to me. Having 100 books in view at one time is different from the "Readers who bought this book also bought this book" suggestion you find on Amazon.

And if you're looking for clothes, you can pick something up and hold it against another item of clothing to see if they go well together. Not so on the Internet.

Conclusion? I would not want to do without physical shops.

If, however, you take the view of some of the Guardian readers that bricks-and-mortar shops are not necessary as you can buy online, then you can extend that to say that we don't need to go out of doors at all.

We don't need cafes, restaurants, bars, pubs or bakeries - we can make our own meals, cakes, bread and biscuits and we can order drinks from the supermarket and drink at home. And anyway, we can just take some shakes and pills and have done with all the overwhelming choice of food and drink and conserve energy. No need for fridges, freezers and cookers.

We don't need libraries - we can download books to our e-readers or just read online.

We don't need gyms - we can follow exercise routines online and buy our own gym equipment.

We don't need to go to the doctor - they can diagnose us via Zoom.

We don't need nail bars (not that I go to them) or hairdressers - the woman upstairs has her nails done by someone who comes to her. And hairdressers and barbers can come to your home, too. Or just cut your own hair and shave yourself. If you're not going out, it doesn't matter what you look like. Or wear a wig.

We don't need live music venues - we can watch them being streamed online.

We don't need cinemas - we can watch films online.

And let's automate everything so that no-one need build everything because robots will do all that for us.


Basically, we can just end up in little pods of our own - rather like the image of the humans plugged into the Matrix and used as a power source.  There'll be no need whatsoever to leave our living quarters at all.

Is that a world you'd like to live in?