Local shops for local people

The thing about blogging is that one is suppposed to blog, not faff around thinking "I'll write it tomorrow," and then not writing it. I respond best to deadlines, as the graph below illustrates:

So, following on my from post about shopping at Lidl I thought I would tell you about the place where I shop most frequently: Kings Road (no apostrophe). It is a lovely place and only a short cycle ride from my home. However, the route to Kings Road involves two hills (well, they're hills to me) and I don't like cycling up hills. Neither are very steep, but but I am not yet fit enough to cycle up both in one go. I make it to the top of the first one, then I have to get off and prat around with the wheels of my cycle in order to give passing traffic the impression that I have only stopped to check something important, not because I am a purple-faced slob with burning thighs.

This is the second hill:

Call that piffling incline a hill, you say? Well yes, I do. It is a hill, I tell you. Not steep, admittedly, but a long, slow incline that when you're cycling feels like it will never end. I set myself little goals, such as "keep going till you reach the first hotel," - there are tons of little hotels and bed and breakfasts on Kings Road - and "see if you can keep breathing normally till you reach the doctors' surgery", which is handily placed at the top of the hill where each day I fully expect to gasp my last.

It's worth it though. For when you reach the shops, there is everything you could possibly want. There are two beauticians for example, both excellent, one now offering "Hollywood Lashes" for the frankly bargain price of £50:

Just as soon as I can lay my hands on a spare fifty quid I'm getting them. Goodbye to looking like a mole blinking in the sunlight, hello to batting my eyeslashes like Cheryl Cole. Just along from "Kingsgrove Hair and Beauty" is the "Ramus Seafood Emporium". This is a place of wonder, selling everything from oysters to Sauvignon Blanc, from Hollandaise sauce (made on the premises) to Monkfish tails. It is deservedly famous in Yorkshire and attracts the well-off (there is always at least one mahoosive 4x4 parked outside it).

Sometimes I just wander around it, just looking at the glistening piles of crayfish and helping myself to the whatever is piled high on their "taster" plates on the counter, chewing thoughtfully and looking as though any minute I will definitely be buying a whole side of smoked salmon.

Saturday mornings are always particularly busy in Ramus, because this is when Harrogate wives come to buy for that night's dinner party. Raffish looking gentlemen, usually wearing pale pink sweaters over yellow corduroy trousers - or it could be pale yellow sweaters over pink corduroy trousers - stand patiently beside their Boden-ed wives as they pick over the sea bass and point their manicured nails at the assistants: "No not that one, THAT one. Tsk."

None of these couples know the meaning of discreet conversation, used as they are to having to raise their voices in order to be heard in their vast, many-roomed palatial homes. "Heff you checked with Joyce if Bodger's complaint has cleared up, daahling?", yells the corduroyed husband. "Oh do shut up Geoffrey," bellows Mrs Boden. "If it flares up again I shall simply never invite them to another dinnah potty."

My favourite shop is the grocers, "Regal Fruiterers". Everything you could possibly want is there, and if you buy, for example, some coconut milk, red chillis, coriander and cashew nuts, they will ask you if you are making a Thai curry and make informed and incredibly useful suggestions for other ingredients, methods of cooking and suchlike. I love that shop.

As you can see from the photo, next to Regal is "Archimboldo's", an Italian delicatessen that sells the most divine bread, pasta, proscuitto and a wide variety of dishes they cook themselves, including Lasagne, Tuscany Beef Stew, Melanzane alla Parmigiana - you get the picture. Of course, the downside to this is that any Harrogate wife who serves an Italian dish at her dinnah potty is immediately suspected of having bought it from Archimboldo's and passed it off as their own work.

If you haven't stuffed yourself with the bits of bread and cubes of smoked meat on their counter, you can wander along to Swanky Pants and buy yourself some sensational undies or swimwear (I ignore the Couture Bride section, for obvious reasons).

I missed out the butchers, cycle shop (very handy when I don't know how to adjust my brakes or gears, they always help and don't charge when it's just something small), the teeny Sainsburys that is open till 10pm, the off-licence, the French bakery, the interior design shop......... ooh I nearly forgot. Shine. Shine sells lovely, inexpensive jewellery, most of it hand-made. I at the moment, I covet all of these:

especially the leather cuffs with the roses on the bottom shelf.

Kings Road is not in the centre of Harrogate. Yet is has every shop - and more - that anyone could want. Sadly, we lost the post office last year when our lovely Government closed so many of them around the country. Still, it is a five minute cycle ride from my house and apart from my regular bus trips to Lidl, this is where I shop. We should all support our local shops because once they're lost, we won't get them back.