The girl who reads is here.

The man who recommends something to everyone and usually, but not this morn, wears a jogging outfit is here.

Chipenham - coffee, shopping and the economy

The rather sour-faced server, who is when she summons it up jollier than that, is here.

Through the window I see the shops that are struggling, strung out along the high street.

What does a struggling shop look like?

It does not look like anything!

Nothing you can see.

It’s the name of the shop, it’s the chain, the brand or the category.

Clothing chain – struggling (with some dynamic exceptions); bookshop – struggling; cheap outdoors outfitters – struggling but perhaps some are buying to equip themselves for a cheaper vacation; Bank – making all the mistakes yet still selling itself as if it were a dream come true to customers…struggling; mobile phone shop – always empty save for 30 minute long per-sale interactions – struggling (if it weren’t for the fact that the “shop” is merely a portal to a service an amorphous, generic conduit and has no “stickiness” as a brand. Branding time, “minutes”, airwaves is a challenge!)

So what is missing from this mix?

What can we find to excite it, light it up with new, financially nutritious, genuine, bubbling, buoyant stuff?

UK TV has exhumed  zombies from the media grave and brought them upstairs and then downstairs after an episode of Lewis a program which is More with Morse left out…well thus , Lewis.

It is a choice of boredom and brain destruction such as The Apprentice or the mood and setting of Poirot,  then the re-hash of a long running ancient favourite or a show with the the main character missing from a progam named for the main man’s right hand man.

Strange stuff this TV programming, but then it is so very hard to fill numerous digital channels with something that beats a slide show of holiday photos. Is it not?

We can do better ladies and gentlemen.

If you have not, you must.  Visit the Wallace Collection in London.

Not only is it a fine collection of works of art, paintings, furniture, porcelain, but the wonderful tea-room is alone worth a visit.

[Show as slideshow]

See also:

• The Wallace Collection website