My auntie and uncle ran the Moor Grocer’s shop in Killinghall Road, Undercliffe, Bradford for many years. Their day started early with the bacon being delivered to be boned and rolled, they had two big lumps of lard and butter that would be weighed out and it was a typical grocer’s shop of the day with fresh produce, tins and packets. I used to love going to the shop in those days and used to be amazed at my auntie Hilda who seemed to know the price of every item in the shop and would write the prices down on a paper bag as she served customers and then, quick as a flash, she would total the figures up, and bear in mind, in my early days she would be totalling pounds shillings and pence, what a genius! Sadly, she suffered with dementia later in life and I used to feel sad, given what a brilliant brain she had once had.
Of course, the world has moved on now and by and large people do their “big shop” in supermarkets and, because of the cost savings, many of us only use corner shops nowadays for odd items we need when the big stores are closed.
Supermarkets operate on the principle of buying huge volumes of stock and with their buying power they can afford to sell at competitive prices and still make a decent profit, and sadly shops like The Moor Grocers have been squeezed out in a lot of communities, although I see on Google maps that my auntie and uncle’s shop is still trading as Pakistan, Gambian, Halal Meat and Groceries.
Over the years I have seen the supermarkets invest in increasing numbers of self-service tills and love those stores where you can scan your own shopping, thus making the whole process faster than ever. I like to shop early on a morning so as to avoid crowds of other people and as I go around our local store I see the little chap in the picture above. They have a robotic floor cleaner that chunters up and down the aisles cleaning the floor, unaided by human beings. If you get in the way, it politely stops and lets you go, and then continues on its journey.
Increasingly in the modern world we are faced with changes, and at my stage in life I often feel amazed at the latest innovations, and as I look at the little floor cleaner, I would love to have the wisdom to know how to make something like that function. In her day, my auntie Hilda used to amaze me, the skill to know the price of the products in the shop and her mental arithmetic speed was pure genius, but sadly no longer required today. I can get long lists of figures to total up in fractions of a second on a simple spreadsheet and have very little need of mental arithmetic, machines do that for me.
I don’t like to stand in the way of progress and am one of those people who like to embrace modern ways, but I do get concerned that increasingly humans are being squeezed out and the machines are taking over and there are times when I crave to old way of doing things. As somebody who works in the world of religion, I find myself constantly being challenged by the question “Where does God fit in the modern world”