I Left My Heart in Cowes
23 September 2009
I was on the Isle of Wight last week. It was bloody brilliant. The isle, for many, is like a time capsule, a pickled curio of how we used to live, back in the 50’s or something. Well, I guess that’s how the Tourist Board promote it. I disagree. I do tend to, usually.
I think it’s an experiment in how we should be living in the future. And if so, I can’t wait to get there.
I went for Bestival, but I came away loving that whole island life thing. Self-contained, self-sufficient, self-assured but not, at least not on my watch, selfish.
Cowes is a typical example of the sort of town we’ll all be living in, in the future. It’s so future I was half expecting to see Judith Han demonstrating how a Walkman works from a lectern in the town hall.
There’s a restaurant, along Cowes twisting, cobbled Main Street, called DB’s (it’s excellent, by the way) which is run, successfully, by a husband and wife team. They don’t own a car. They walk to the local shops to get their groceries, and to the wharf for their fish. And don’t look for it on the internet. They don’t have a website. And, even on a Monday night – with no 2-for-1 coupon promotion cut out from the Gazette – it was full.
The stores along the pedestrianised core don’t open from 9am to 9pm – they casually raise their shutters at 10 and, well, when the crowds die down, they’ll call it a day. And they have fascias picked out in gold lettering, not pre-moulded plastic. Each store as unique and tempting as the last. Virtually no chains. No Tesco. No Boots. No WH Smiths. Instead, an independent pharmacist or two, lots of stationers, and family-run greengrocers. OK, there’s a Co-op, but if you’re going to have a supermarket, that’s the one to have.
Liz Earle, Ryde
Liz Earle, Ryde
And Cowes is a financially secure, working, vibrant town. It’s not a museum piece. Same too with neighbouring Ryde, where boutiques, bookshops ironmongers are squeezed into the shopfronts of Union Street. And where too the wonderful Liz Earle (the UK’s most successful independent beauty brand) has her HQ. The Isle of Wight, says Ms Earle, is the perfect place to set up a small business, because, she says, people support them, and will them to succeed.
http://web.skrift.co.uk/2009/09/23/i-left-my-heart-in-cowes/
Tags: isle of wight. cowes
